Multiple sclerosis. A terrible wasting disease that not only ruins the lives of sufferers, but often those of families and loved ones who must care for them. Up to now the causes of this and several other neurological disorders have been pretty obscure, which is why we have been following recent progress(LSS 15/17 1 2022) with the guidance of our erudite correspondent Gaynor Lynch. Now there is even more reinforcement for what Gaynor, and we have been saying, in the shape of a piece from Nature Briefings. As Gaynor so presciently observed, the role of the Epstein-Barr virus is implicated as a possible cause. The immunological response to the virus may, tragically, be the root of the neurodegeneration. The first extract from Nature is as usual, but you may struggle with the link onwards-sorry. We will paste it below, then indulge in a little speculation, for those who may be interested.

Researchers who study multiple sclerosis (MS) are split into two main camps: most see autoimmunity as the driving factor for the illness, but a minority invoke viral culprits. Last month, a study of a large group of people followed over many years found that infection with the Epstein-Barr virus increased the likelihood of developing MS by more than 32-fold. But this associative connection lacked a causal, disease-triggering link. Now, evidence might settle the debate through a compromise solution, writes neurobiologist Hartmut Wekerle. Antibodies that attack the Epstein–Barr virus also recognize GlialCAM, a protein that is in glial cells in the brain.Nature | 9 min read
This News & Views article is exclusively available to readers with subscriber access to Nature. Click here for help getting logged in with your institution’s subscription.

Now for the speculation. The following has nothing to do with Gaynor, Nature or any formal scientific research that we know of. And no, we have not been drinking. But because we are an independent blog, not beholden to any paymaster or institution, we are able to indulge ourselves in the delicious pleasure of unsubstantiated guesswork and speculation.(it won’t be very often!)

If the above research is true, then viruses can affect the nervous system. Specifically the ganglions and neural sheaths which play such a key role in reliable transmission of messages in that nervous system. We know that sufferers from other mental disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression also experience episodes of erratic and impaired neurological function. Is it time to start looking for a virus here as well?

#neurological disorders #virus #multiple sclerosis #schizophrenia

_{We apologise for presenting a longer blog than usual. But as this will be the last for several days, we hope our accustomed brevity will balance this particular prolixity for once!}

People deny facts! People cannot reason! People are thick, stupid, xenophobic, bigoted,  submissive to Fox News, the Daily Mail…….  So run the agonised shrieks of many who call themselves progressives, educated, enlightened, or whatever  vain label they have applied in  response to the advances of populism in so many countries since 2008. And still can’t understand why it keeps winning.

Because the facts seemed to be on our side. So did reason, which is merely a way of organising facts into logical groups.  It was the way were trained.  In the tradition that dates back to Ancient Greece, nurtured in the schools of Medieval Europe and on via the Enlightenment to the present day.   It works like this.  Smallpox is a disease (check statement for veracity) Smallpox vaccine prevents the disease(check statement for veracity). Other vaccines may cure other diseases (check statement for veracity)  Conclusion: vaccines are a good thing So why all the objections? Why the seeming inability to use language and logic in the way we do? One clue to the answer goes like this.

Many people use words, but these words are not what they really mean.   We suspect many speakers are actually expressing deep emotional problems welling up from unhappy inner selves.  Such a person may develop an obsession about the Gold Standard for example. Yet they cannot know about the Gold Standard, for how can any of us who have not studied economics? And this is true for any one of us from Professors of Quantum Physics to retired garage hands. Most racists, anti-vaxxers and climate deniers we have met have no education in biology, medicine or meteorology. Of course there may be exceptions, it’s just that we have not met them yet.

Many on the Left are quick to shut down opinions with which they disagree. “No platform for these words!” is the earnest cry. But what if the words you are hearing are not what the speaker is really feeling and is really concerned with?. Dare we suggest you are missing something?   Many people carry a lifetime of frustrations, traumas, festering resentments, isolations and unrequited desires. It’s almost inevitable that these will be projected onto others-outgroups, perceived elites, those who are more prosperous or coping better. Its only human and natural to look for confirmation you are right. It takes a lifetime of training, and usually several degrees, to realise the intelligent response is to look for confirmation that you are wrong.

Yet this seething mass of emotion is raw data about society and politics. And our enemies were quicker to see the opportunity it presented -and used it.  Time now for our side to learn  as well. To listen. Only then will the real causes of our woes be addressed.

#populism #reason #logic #fact #alternative fact #racism #xenophobia #nostalgia #climate science denial #anti vaxxers

Just before we all plunge into yet another stupid, senseless war, let’s take a last look back at the real problems. Because whoever survives will have to confront them. And biggest on the list is Nature‘s report of a growing surge in global methane emissions, Remember methane has a warming potential at least 28 time greater than carbon dioxide. Why do we tremble? Well, first of all we’ll let you read Nature’s report Methane is spiking dangerously fast. We strongly urge you to click on the links

As global methane concentrations soar to nearly triple preindustrial levels, some researchers fear that global warming itself is behind the rapid rise. Data released in January by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that atmospheric methane has raced past 1,900 parts per billion. The growth of methane emissions began a rapid and mysterious uptick around 2007. The spike has caused many researchers to worry that global warming is creating a feedback mechanism that will cause ever more methane to be released, making it even harder to rein in rising temperatures. The grim milestone underscores the importance of a pledge made at last year’s COP26 climate summit to curb emissions of the greenhouse gas, which is at least 28 times as potent as CO₂ We have underlined the key message, and here is the link to the main paper:

Nature | 5 min read

Why does this keep us awake at night? Because of the immense quantities of methane trapped in the Siberian permafrost for one thing. Perhaps if Mr Putin addressed that, rather than the Ukraine, he might perform more of a service to his own subjects as well as citizens of the wider world. Secondly the immense amount of methane clathrates littering the ocean floor. Their methane content is only a few degrees from being released. Suddenly. If that happened the runaway warming would be terminal. Now, do we all really want to still deny how serious this is?

#global warming #climate change #permafrost #vladimir putin #methane #feedback

Things we have hoped for since our youth that may be coming true

Hope For Energy Forget our earlier testy blogs about nuclear fusion. There’s real hope that working reactors may be really possible. Here’s Nature

An experimental reactor in the United Kingdom has generated the highest-ever sustained energy from nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun. The Joint European Torus (JET) produced 59 megajoules of energy over a fusion ‘pulse’ of five seconds. JET’s success suggests that a follow-up project that uses the same technology and fuel mix — the ambitious US$22-billion ITER, scheduled to begin fusion experiments in 2025 — should eventually be able to achieve the ultimate goal: generating more energy than is put in.Nature | 5 min read

Helping the disabled to walk When we were young, a spinal injury was a sentence to life in a wheel chair. Still so? Read below

Three people once paralysed by complete spinal-cord injuries can walk, swim, pedal a bicycle and even paddle canoes, thanks to a device that stimulates neurons in their spinal cords. It is the first implant specifically designed to control movement by mimicking the signals the lower body usually receives from the brain and upper spinal cord. Each participant recovered some level of movement within one day of activating the implant, such as walking on a treadmill while their weight was supported.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Nature Medicine paper

Hope for the hungry Imagine if everyone in Africa could at last get some sort of decent meal, the way we do in European Countries, Maybe imaginative uses of crops will help, as Nadia Radzman describes in The Conversation

https://theconversation.com/how-forgotten-beans-could-help-fight-malnutrition-in-africa-176857?

Hope For Michael Gove All of the above were developed by experts. People of whom British Minister Michael Gove famously said “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts… from organisations with acronyms saying they know what is best and consistently getting it wrong. (Sky news 3 June 2016)

So where’s the hope? That we will learn to stop listening to people like Michael Gove.

#fusion #spina; implants #world hunger #michael gove

Today, in full cognisance of the impending arrival of Valentine’s Day on Monday, we had over our blog to The Savoy Cocktail Book, published by Constable. all we’ve done is pick out a few from their huge and stylish range which seem to have a sort of valentiny-ish theme. We will leave you to do the rest. Including drink them. One caveat :although the book is excellent , their measuring system is impenetrable. For example, in many a recipe they say a quarter, but a quarter of what, exactly? There are no units! So we have adapted our own measures, honed from long experience. You will need ice for all by the way.

Sweet Patotie: 1 measure fresh orange juice, 1/2 measure Cointreau, 1 measure dry gin. Shake over ice, and pour into cocktail glass. Decorate with lemon.

Cherry Mixture: 1 measure French Vermouth, 1 Measure Italian Vermouth,1 dash Maraschino 1 dash angostura bitters. Shake over ice and pour to chilled cocktail glass, Decoration: Cherry

Should give you that nice reddish pink Valentine’s glow

Pink Gin 1 glass of dry gin. 1 Dash of Angostura. They used to like this in the Royal Navy, though quite where the Valentine’s connection enters in we’re not sure! To whom would sailors send a Valentine on a long sea voyage?

There’s loads more pink ones but as they seem to recommend the use of uncooked eggs, but we’re not sure we can recommend them on a science and health website. But there is enough here to get you started. And if the above is not sufficient, you can always try mixing pink Cava with cold lager.

Happy Valentine’s day to you all

One more murder in Manchester: is it worth comment? Yes, because Manchester could stand in for any great city. The circumstances are detailed in the Manchester Evening News. [1] This report is more lurid because for once it was possible to name the perpetrators. The old debate about causes will now follow its weary course through inequality, hormones and high spirits, gangster chic, music, deprivation and even too much lead.

We think the cause lies elsewhere: a failure of education. A working education system lifts up, inspiring from the local to the general, from despair to possibility. Without it, attention focusses on the petty, the parochial -the narcissism of small differences if you like. And among the uneducated such preoccupations prove fatal the world over.

It is in this light that we read the thoughts of Simon Jenkins of The Guardian.[2] He describes a dreary system of exam factories and narrow curricula that could have been purpose-built to alienate huge numbers of young people. We need exams. But a neurotic focus on them teaches nothing of life skills, emotional intelligence and flexibility , the core qualities of a thriving workforce. And kids know that. And reject accordingly. And are lost, as these ones were.

[1] Reece Tansey killers named for first time as judge lifts reporting restrictions – Manchester Evening News

[2] Wasteful, costly and cruel: it’s time to bin GCSEs for good | Simon Jenkins | The Guardian

#crime #gangster rap #crime #inner cities #youth #education #schools

No issue has torn through the heart of western societies like immigration. No problem has produced such anxiety and polemic. On both sides of the political divide, to be be fair. Nothing explains Donald Trump, Brexit, populism and webhate as well as immigration. If the politics of the twentieth century were all about class, those of our own are all. about identity.

The Left want to pretend the problem does not exist, like Victorians avoiding the mention of sex. The Right can think of nothing else but shouting, building walls and sending in The Navy. None have any value. For they are concerned with symptoms, not causes. Peoples’ fears and concerns are very real and deep. Unless we address the real causes of the mass migrations, they could yet destroy us all.

Writing in the Conversation, the admirable Seb Rumsby makes a real and earnest stab at the task. Read it, and think. Seb may not have all the answers. But at least he tries.

https://theconversation.com/economic-migration-the-root-problem-is-not-smugglers-but-global-inequality-174073?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lat

#immigration #ehtnic identity #webhate #donald trump #brexit #inequality

Stories of more than passing significance

Not the end yet: Seasoned readers may recall our piece Is Omicron the last Hurrah for Covid? (LSS 20 12 21) in which we noted speculations that omicron might spell the end for Covid-19. Not so fast!- as Nature makes all too clear: Will Omicron end the pandemic?

The World Health Organization and others have suggested the rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant could signal the end of the pandemic, because of the short-term surge in immunity that will follow. Researchers warn that the situation remains volatile and difficult to model. Different vaccine strategies, types and take-up rates from country to country, as well as fluctuating rates of infection and recovery, have left a diverse immunological landscape. So, how will it end? Not with Omicron, researchers predict. “This will not be the last variant, and so the next variant will have its own characteristics,” says infectious-diseases modeller Graham Medley.Nature | 7 min read

Denisovans are not just DNA The initial discovery of a new lineage of humans, the Denisovans, entirely by their DNA was exciting. But where are the remains of this third member of the modern human family? There are a couple of fingers, a tooth and a jaw. Now Michael Marshall of New Scientist speculates that a partial skull from Xujiayao in China might be linked to our exiguous cousins. Could there be more fragments, some in the ground, some in museums, which could shed more light?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2305830-160000-year-old-fossil-may-be-the-first-denisovan-skull-weve-found/

MIcheal’s piece may be paywalled, so here is the original paper

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248421001718

Hangxiety Do some people get panic attacks after a night on the booze, in addition to all the other unpleasant symptoms? Craig Gunn looks at the whos, whens, whys and whats for The Conversation

https://theconversation.com/hangxiety-why-some-people-experience-anxiety-during-a-hangover-176285?u

End of the ice won’t take ages Greenland alone is now melting at a terrifying rate. The reason we respect this is that it comes from the impeccably right wing Daily Mail, not a bastion of woke correctness. Moral: if they’re worried, so should you be

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10476139/Climate-change-Greenland-lost-ice-2002-submerge-1-5-FEET-water.html

Fish Spill clue to human mystery species The mystery being : How can any creature dare to call itself Homo SAPIENS, goddammitt, when it can do things like this to the planet? Guardian and agencies

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/05/shock-in-france-after-giant-trawler-sheds-100000-dead-fish-off-coast

On that sardonic note, we’ll leave you. Let’s hope there will be enough fish in the ocean to go with your Friday night cocktail

#denisovans #human evolution #Sars-Cov-2 #covid-19 #ecology #sustainibility #global warming #climate change

“When facts change, I change my mind.” When JM Keynes wrote those words he spoke not just for economists, but for intelligent people everywhere. Which is why we’d like you to at least think about the work of Professor Livnat and his team at Haifa Univeristy, as ably reported by Ryan Morrison of the Mail [1] For the Professor and his team may have found evidence of non random mutations in the part of our genes that codes for the HbS protein that helps protect us from Malaria.

Why is this important? Because the central tenet of evolutionary theory is that mutations in the genome accumulate at random; the consequences of these are selected in the environment so that those with the most favourable mutations survive and reproduce at higher rates. The alternative, proposed by Lamarck, is that somehow organisms “learn” from their environment, and thus modify their own inheritances. So far there has been little evidence for this.

Yet now the team at Haifa seem to have found evidence of mutations in the HbS genes occurring at a rate faster than might be expected from random, inherent mutation. If so, it will be ground breaking, doing for Biology what the famous Michelson Morley result did for physics. So how do we at LSS respond?

1 Caution, as ever. There have been Lamarckian upswings before in the history of biology-most recently associated with epigenetics-but the central doctrine, as t’were, has still held firm

2 There seems to be one supporting study (see the article) but we’d like to see a lot more

3 If information gets back to the genes from the environment, how? And how is it stored. If giraffes learn to grow longer necks by stretching, how do they tell their genes to store the new data?

4 Professor Livnat agrees random mutations still play a big part. Pray tell us, how is this contribution integrated with the “learned” contribution-at a level of explanation that would satisfy an information scientist.

Yes, we at LSS are open minded, and long for more money for the Professor and his team. But we are also skeptics on all matters, and the wisest counsel is: wait and see.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10465347/New-study-suggests-genetic-mutations-NOT-random.html

Ryan’s article has a great hyperlink to the original paper

#natural selection #mutation #lamarck #dna #evolution #biology

Kent, garden of England. Land of apple orchards and oasthouses. Of prosperous gin-and jag commuter towns. Of Geezers in white vans of whom it was once said “they have tools and language, but no culture”. Harsh! Of white cliffs and deep green forests. And all of them voting Conservative since at least the time of King Oisc (458-512 AD) You’d think Labour would love to get a foothold there somehow. And so they did in 2017 when the affable Rosie Duffield took the Cathedral/University town of Canterbury. If you want to learn how Labour will now throw it away, read this link by Jessica Elgot of The Guardian:

ttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/30/canterbury-mp-rosie-duffield-considering-quitting-labour

The reason that the Tories keep winning is that they have a far better understanding of the words “needs” and “grievances.” What each word means, and what importance to address to either. Working class people aren’t fools: they too have dictionaries. Until Labour (and many other progressive forces such as liberals, social democrats, socialists and the rest) make the same effort, they will continue to lose. And rightly so.

#politics #rosie duffield #labour #conservative #working class