If we are going to get through the current climate crisis, and come out alive at the other end, we ‘ll need to consider every new idea, however outre it may sound at first sight, Which is why we want to showcase, via the Conversation,[1] the work of Mike Allen , Professor of Genomics at the University of Exeter and founder of SeaGen,[2] a company which has the courage and vision to think differently. ]For Mike thinks that by using robotics, he can harness the enormous biomass of seaweed in the sargasso sea, and other places
Now we’ve always been pro- seaweed here. Veteran readers may recall our promotion of the new Sussex kelp forest, both on this site and in articles in local newspapers and websites [3] and we certainly talked about how the stuff, especially kelp, could be a source of all kinds of useful things like food and fertiliser. But as his article and website makes clear, Mike is taking this to a whole new level. By using autonomous robotic systems, the harvesting and processing of the weeds can be done on an ergonomic and industrial scale.
We have no financial or any other connection to this man or his company. But we are massive fans of the hopeful start-up. Because we believe that progress, real progress grows form that complicated network of new companies , university departments, government agencies and anonymous little industrial estates where the real dreams of the future are born. We’ve done stories like this before, and will do more in the future. If you really need a declaration of interest it is this: they may help us to survive.
Overwhelmed by a huge flood of suggestions , the only way we could cope was to pull them into this handy easy to access guide to some of the most significant happenings of the week. You don’ have to click on all of them
Will the Yes men Bring Down Donald Trump? As organisations get successful they attract more people who are adept at climbing the ladder rather than doing the job. The USA is somewhere near peak Trump at the moment. The Conversation warns how bad advice could end all in tears
Fusion on Trent The person who sent us this idea has had to endure our enthusiasm for nuclear fusion for more than fifty three years, despite the fact that it hasn’t worked for fifty of them. Now all that may be about to change in Nottinghamshire in the UK as The I newspaper explains https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/limitless-clean-energy-nuclear-fusion-3711971
thanks to P Seymourvia Apple News
Weighing the risks of bowel cancer Inequality leads to poor diets. Poor diets lead to obesity. Obesity leads to bowel cancer. How ironic, therefore, to see a riff on this theme in the Mail, of all places. But there it is so, there you go, as they say(that’s enough cliches-ed)
Shuttle and open We’ve riffed a bit ourselves here about the blood brain barrier over the years. It’s a pretty tough problem for those who would like to treat various disorders of the central nervous system. Now new hope come sin the form of molecular shuttles as Nature Briefing explains
To reach the brain, drugs must pass through the highly-selective blood-brain barrier. Large molecules, such as antibodies, don’t cross easily, if at all. Now, small chemical tags that can ‘shuttle’ drugs across the barrier are offering a way forward. Several such shuttles, which take advantage of natural transport systems, are in the works. Some have already been trialled in rare diseases, with signs of success. The field is in its infancy, but these shuttles promise to revolutionize treatments for diseases from Alzheimer’s to cancer.Nature | 10 min read
When scientists have a bone to pick It is an invariable law in paleontology , especially of the human kind, that the rancour of the disputes between its protagonists is in inverse proportion to the numbers of remains they have to work with. There is no better example of fear and loathing than the disputes over the bones of Sahelanthropus, the famous Toumai, which was once hailed as the uber-ancestor of us all. Before you hand over the world to an Aristocracy of the Educated, as some advocate, read this.
One of Saturday morning’s great pleasures, an hour or so before Spanish class, is to settle down in Costa with a coffee and a hard copy of the Financial Times. And one of the best writers in that journal is Simon Kuper. He’s clear, he’s brief, he deals in the currency of short sentences and defined concepts. He’s also a polymath, covering subjects as diverse as politics, urban planning and football(he’s even done a very workmanlike guide to the affairs of Barcelona FC . [1] In fact, he’s exactly the sort of writer we ought to showcase here, because he believes in our core LSS values of evidence, reason, and reserved judgement.
How appropriate therefore that his last column was called Seven Intellectual Habits of the best thinkers., for there can be no better short guide. [2] The problem is that access is behind a paywall. As LSS is such an important institution, and our readers so avid for wisdom, we rang the Editor of the Financial Times a to demand that this be lifted as a Special Case., and that he/she/ they might like to buy us lunch to discuss the matter further. The young person on the switchboard thanked us very much and promised they would call us back. So far they have not done so(that was three days ago) but doubtless there were other callers. So, while we are waiting, we thought that we could offer you a distilled reproduction of Simon’s thoughts:
1 Read Books ” Their complexity is a check on pure ideology” People who simplify the world are the ones who fall for conspiracy theories or the offers of charlatans.
2 Don’t use screens much Apparently, biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who invented CRISPR technology gets her best insights when she’s out weeding her tomato plants. Obviously you have to use screens a bit, or you couldn’t read this! But we get Simon’s drift: a little screen time is a lot.
3 Do your own work, not the world’s The same Doudna got a gig at Genentech, leading their research. She lasted two months before hightailing it back to Berkeley where the true intellectual freedom led her to the Nobel Prize. We agree: people who spend all their time on office politics actually accomplish very little that is either interesting or of value.
4 Be multidisciplinary Kuper cites the examples of Hayek, Godel, Van Neumann and others who all studied one thing, trained in another and did their best work in a third. Daniel Kahneman is cited as another multi-disciplinarian polymath of formidable intellectual power. Rather worryingly, our AI system has set his book as homework for us. Where’ are John and Sarah Connor when you really need them?
5 Be an empiricist who values ideas Kuper cites the case of Isaiah Berlin and his marvellous work the Hedgehog and the Fox , a masterpiece of political philosophy. Incidentally Winston Churchill got him mixed up with Irving Berlin and invited the wrong one to dinner.”My British Buddy” as Berlin himself would later remark in song.
6 Always assume you might be wrong Yep: in this country we are still trying to repair the effects of the blissful certainties of Brexit. You will doubtless have examples from your own lands
7 Keep learning from everyone “Only mediocrities boast as adults about where they went to University at 18.They imagine that intelligence is innate and static. In fact people become more or less intelligent through life depending on how hard they think. The best thinkers are always learning from others, no matter how young or low status” We quote Kuper rather fully here as the first part seems one of the most admirable and accurate summaries of the sorts of people one met on a daily basis during long decades in the Scientific Civil Service. Now there’s intelligence indeed.
Today we are brining you news of one of the best stories we’ve covered in many a long year of campaigning. Today Hofman-La Roche have announced late stage trials of a brand new antibiotic called Zosurabalpin. If all goes well it could be ready for clinical practice very soon. [1] We’ve been following this for a while now (LSS 1 4 24; The Conversation 5 1 24)[3] : it’s extraordinarily gratifying to see the long process so near to fruition.
There’s much to be excited about at a pure scientific level. Zosuralpin is designed to go after the particularly deadly bacterium Acinobacter baumannii, which can kill up to 50% of its victims. It’s one of those gram negative ones with a double cell wall. Zosurabalpin tackles this in a new way, specifically targeting lipopolysaccharides which the organism uses to maintain the integrity of those walls. For the first time since we entered the world of antibiotics, a gram negative bacteria, the ones which used to really concern the great Professor Garner and the other founders hasa been cornered. But that’s not our main learning point today.
Because Hofman did not develop this alone. Like all modern research it was international and collaborative. The international partner they chose was Harvard University, the oldest in the United States Of America, and one of the best in the world. Until recently. For as astute readers will know, this institution has recently been on the end of a tremendous kicking from President Donald Trump (pictured above with some of his supporters) and other members of his government. We are not certain yet if this will end terminally for Harvard. But at the very least, the time they spend defending themselves from their barbaric assailants would be time better spent developing new antibiotics. It’s worth balancing consequences like that against the savage impulses of the unreasoned, the unlearned and the unintelligent.
Do Civilisations collapse? Do elaborate trade networks fall apart? Giant cities turn into uninhabited ruins? Ancient systems of law, education and custom vanish entirely ? Leaving nothing but an illiterate dark age, racked by violence and disorder? Yes, they can. We’ve alluded once or twice here to the collapse of the Greco-Roman world (LSS 10 3 21; 17 12 22) Professor Harper makes a convincing case for climate change and disease pandemics as the causes of that one. We in western countries are haunted by the Fate of Rome; it was relatively close in time. But there have been others.
The Bronze Age collapse 1200 BCE is further back in time, and has left fewer records, That it occurred there is no doubt. [2] For several centuries a large network of trade had built up across regions which we now call the Near East and Europe. There were cities, elaborate systems or wring and belief, Considerable prosperity; for some, and by the standards of the time. Around 1200 BCE all this was suddenly and violently cast down, with waves of wars and invasions. It took four or five hundred years at least for order of a sort to be restored and progress to resume, Further afield , the collapse of the Shang dynasty in China (c. 1050 BCE) and the Olmec Civilisation of Central America (c, 400 BCE) are chilling reminders that civilisational collapse is not unique to the West.
Art this distance in time it is possible to see a pattern. The natural human instinct to trade and ma make a bit of spare cash gradually leads to the growth of larger and larger cities. These require common systems of law to maintain the rising levels of prosperity. The resulting peace is very pleasant to live under for a few generations. But lurking in the trade routes are the pandemic diseases which can shake societies to their foundations. When you combine that with the ability to cause massive changes in climate(no one would dream of blaming the Myceneans for that!) the potential for sudden catastrophic failure is multiplied exponentially.
Such an event would confront the educated classes(of which the readers of this blog are such valuable members) with a number of inconveniences. We will look at possible responses in the next few blogs,
[1]Kyle Harper The Fate of Rome Princeton University Press 2017
Another big thank you to readers, commentators, and the indefatigable ideas people including our researchers and fellow members of the Editorial Board. We are indeed getting mote readers, more followers and above all more likes and comments. All of which keep us in mid season form, as Wodehouse would have it: full of the joys of nature’s second season, with the old ginger whacked up absolutely to the top of the tank.
If you can bear it, we thought we’d throw away a couple of lines on who is reading, and about what. Unitedstatespersons make up the biggest contingent. Odd when you think this stuff is tapped out in England. Astute readers will not be much surprised to note that English speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia etc joining the line up roughly in proportion to the old demographics. By the time we get down to the more far flung outposts however, the figures do not look so good. Why so few responses from St Helena or Pitcairn Island? We don’t know. But we’re working on it. As for the rest of the world: India always big- a country on the rise with a strong science base, and a large number of English speakers. We had hoped for more from the Spanish Speaking world. Sadly our command of that language is not quite good enough to write articles in it. But if any of you amigos want to comment in the language of Cervantes, we’d love to hear from you. After that, many countries. China figures above the random level; we’d love to know which latter day Kong Qiu peruses our offerings, and where they work.
And what are you reading? The one where we suggested that the President of the United States was a closet Socialist is cantering in at the top of the field everyday. It was meant to be more wry and ironic than a serious discourse on Political Economy. But some like it- a lot. After that- human evolution seems quite popular. Our own idees fixees of antibiotic resistance and climate change are high in the betting, but not always favourites. We need to do more there, we think.
Overall, since we started-progress. Like that new bloke they have at Manchester United, who is being given time. Give us some more too, The world is a big bad place, and once again to paraphrase the Immortal Wodehouse; we thinking Johnnies need to stick together.
THE BOARD
#United States #United Kingdom #China #india #antibiotics #climate change #science
Every so often it pays to look at the same problem from a completely different perspective. For the past 57 years or so we have been collecting and grading reports of human fossil bones and old tools the way that cricket fans collect the records of every game their team has played. But today, with the help of one or two of our redoubtable AI chums, we present a whole new perspective on the old story. Much of it is locked in our genes and has been uncovered by the amazingly intelligent efforts of genetics researchers.
Their discoveries are so extensive that there is too much for a tiny blog: so we’ve summarised the findings below. But look at the timing of the mutation in the famous FOXP-2 gene, and the human species which were running around at the time. True humans fall naturally into two groups. One one side, big -brained essentially modern forms : Homo heidelbergensis, Denisovans, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. On the other? Poor old Homo erectus, significantly smaller-brained and with a much more exiguous technological and cultural life. In this light, the mutation is almost eerily coincident.
Of course the time lines of the mutations are a bit open ended; but the picture from the fossils is a bit vague too. What really impresses us is the way that, give or take an Ice Age or two, the geneticists provide independent validation of the fossil finders’ picture overall. And there’s an even deeper lesson. The same truth can be seen in two completely different ways, Like those night sky apps you can get which can show the same firmament through visual light, x-rays, microwave or radio waves; whichever you choose. Next time you argue with someone ask yourself and them: are we really talking about two different things? There’s a cognitive advance for the ages.
all based on peer reviewed or reputable pre pubs sources(microsoft assistant)
When is CRISPR- Cas-9 Base Pair Editing, and when is Base Pair editing CRISPR Cas-9?. Readers of this blog may be forgiven for thinking Base Pair Editing was the exciting new kid in town that was going to make CRISPR look like VHS tapes ( what they?–ed) But according to reports of a recent breakthrough in medicine, they are, sort of, one and the same thing.
Perhaps we had better start with the breakthrough. Doctors in Pennsylvania in the USA have used gene editing techniques to treat a poor little boy whose liver lacked the necessary enzyme system to process ammonia. Our reports come firstly from Ian Sample of the Guardian and the New England Journal of medicine via hyperlink) , where Base Pair is very much to the fore While Nature Briefing has the following take , again with the hyperlink to the NEJM, Baby Boy Receives CRISPR for One Therapy
A baby boy with a devastating genetic disease is thriving after becoming the first known person to receive a bespoke, CRISPR therapy-for-one. KJ Muldoon, now almost 10 months old, received three doses of a gene-editing treatment designed to repair his specific disease-causing mutation, which impaired his body’s ability to process protein. While Muldoon appears healthy, it is too soon to use the word “cure”, says paediatrician Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas. “This is still really early days.”Nature | 5 min read Reference: New England Journal of Medicine paper
From all of which we have obtain the following Learning Points for your Edification , gentle reader:
1 It matters less what you call it, and more that it works-the kid’s OK now!
2 Maybe Base Pair Editing is a subset of CRISPR the way that Hammersmith is a region of London. OK, it’s Hammersmith. But it’s London too. What’s the big deal?
3 It would be interesting to learn if other big cities like New York or Madrid for examples, contain smaller areas with funny names. But we will leave that to another day.
4 If you educate people, teach them critical thinking skills and give them some money to buy test tubes with, things like this can happen
5 If you keep people working long hours for little money, educate them to a minimum and give them things like Fox News to watch, societal outcomes may be very different
“Everyone is a little bit autistic”. A view you hear quite often. And for us, rather comprehensively dealt with by Dr Aimee Grant of The Conversation [1] The phrase means that all of us show some behaviours(a liking for routine, for example) which are present to a much higher degree in neurodivergent people. Ergo, we don’t have to put in the hard yards of research and thinking which this fascinating condition really invites. Wrong says Dr Grant. Autism is a defined neurological condition with clinical boundaries. Herself autistic, we think she knows what she’s talking about.
The idea of not pontificating on something you know nothing about (autism; and other things) is precious to us here. A few years ago there was a rather hysterical fuss among certain journalists that Autism was caused by the MMR vaccine. Cool heads and reasoned minds showed this idea to be incorrect. What we didn’t know then was that some of the cases that the advocates of the MMR theory cited in support of their cause may not have been autism at all. One of the cases may have been something called Rett syndrome as the acute mind of Professor Nessa Carey pointed out [2] No, we hadn’t heard of it either. So to help you, gentle readers to wade through this minefield of definitions, syndromes and human suffering, we thought we’d offer this brief guide to some of the other things that are out there, and manifest some symptoms which overlap strongly with autism. If only to show the utter, mind boggling complexity of what clinicians and others have to deal with.
Rett Syndrome Cause: Mutations on MECP2 gene Normal early development followed by regression. Mostly affects girls
Fragile X syndrome Mutation on FMR 1 Gene Not all fragile X persons are autistic. Not all autistic persons are fragile X
Phelan McDermaid Syndrome Deletion on chromosome 22, often in SHANK 3 gene
Social Communication Disorder Communication problems Does not involve repetitive behaviours typical of autism
Intellectual Disability(ID) with behavioural challenges cognitive delay is global; but many autistic people have above average intellectual ability
Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) extreme sensitivity to stimuli e.g. light, touch, etc this is the closest to autism and it’s true many experts don’t differentiate it from autism
This is a tip of the iceberg, superficial treatment, as the bounds of our blog dictate. But it’s enough to make you pause and think “There are more things in heaven and earth than you have thought of in your philosophy, Horatio” as Hamlet once remarked. The real point is not what we know, but how much there still is to discover. And how those discoveries may yet be organised. But that’s a job for another day.
It is November 1987. If you turn on the radio, you might hear T’Pau‘s popular ditty China in your Hand, or maybe George Michael belting out Faith. In the UK , Mrs Thatcher‘s government is reaching peaks of popularity, although last month’s financial crash is a harbinger of that there may be troubles ahead. But you don’t mind, because you’re going to see Cher in Moonstruck, and…….that’s it. Nothing else happens for 38 years. Because you are in prison. High Security prison in fact, for a murder which you did not commit. The world moves on, but you are frozen in 1987.
That’s what happened to Peter Sullivan. [1]His conviction was for the murder of a poor innocent woman called Diane Sindall, who died in tragically brutal circumstances in 1986, and whose real assailant has never been found. And despite repeated appeals to courts and organisations like the CCRC, whose ostensible purpose is to review purported miscarriages of justice, nothing was ever done, Until his case was taken up by APPEAL. They are a tiny charity, skeleton-staffed by lawyers and other professionals. Legal Davids taking on a Goliath of wrongful convictions. You can read more about their work here [2] One recent heart warming success was the release of an unfortunate man named Andy Malkinson who was wrongfully jailed for rape in 2003. Their are many other cases like his on our system; there will be in yours too, overseas readers.
We know there have been advances in Forensic Sciences. We know that Police Officers are forced to work far too hard, with dreadful lack of funds. We know that makes them vulnerable to all -too -human faults like jumping to conclusions and confirmation bias. ( we are less sympathetic to the hysterical vitriol poured out by the media when a “successful” conviction has been achieved) But we do know that the world needs an organisation that deals in the best currency of our species-second thoughts. APPEAL is one such. Hopelessly understaffed. desperately under resourced. They are there for every little person who has felt the full obdurate weight of the criminal justice system sitting right on their chests. And to help some of these victims stumble free, unbelievingly, into 2025.
Learning, Science and Society 