Round Up: Gulf Stream collapse. stem cells rule the world, and much more

an ever-so-slightly flippant look at stories from near and far:

Gulf Stream Collapse If the Atlantic currents fail, life as we know it in western Europe will be pretty much unsustainable. The very fact that this comes from the impeccably right-wing Mail shows it is not climate change zealotry https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/86/messages/AA5iTI1EuaNWaFvEagvLiAbCFXc?.intl=uk&.lang=en-GB&.partner=none&.src=fp

The new political landscape Believe it or not, we feel a bit sorry for all those avid class warriors of the last century (both sides) as all their efforts now seem a waste of time. The world runs on identity, not economics as the immensely learned Professor Curtice shows in the Conversation

https://theconversation.com/how-britains-new-political-divide-delivers-voters-to-reform-and-the-greens-259613?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%2

Stem Cells #1 An eye to the future Over twenty years ago, The Most Intelligent Man Whom We Have Ever Met was predicting a rosy future for stem cells. Today’s first proof he was right comes from this marvellous new treatment for blindness in the Mail

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14839199/Man-blinded-Fourth-July-fireworks-grows-new-eye.html

Stem Cells #2 The sweet smell of success More proof of the prescience of the this same Most Intelligent Man Whom We have Ever Met is again from the Mail(our researchers seem to read little else) with this rather nifty advance in diabetes therapies

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14842321/Major-breakthrough-10-patients-diabetes-CURED.html

Genes back in fashion Full twenty five years ago, and more (that’s enough declamation-ed) we used to delight in boring Police Officers and other uninterested visitors how important the human genome project was going to be. Proof we were on to something comes in this intriguing article in the Guardian where scientists are trying to recreate the whole thing from scratch in a test tube

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jun/26/synhg-uk-synthetic-human-genome-project-dna-genetic-code

And the music? Although never giant fans of the work of Mr David Dundas-we tend to prefer JS Bach and the Baroque lot) we cannot, in the light of the foregoing, avoid putting up his famous ditty about “waking up in the morning putting his old blue jeans on”, or something like that Jeans/genes-geddit?

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=davis+dundas+blue+jeans&&mid=9C6E36DE4376CDB2E74D9C6E36DE4376CDB2E74D&&FORM=VRDGAR

#genes #dna #diabetes #eye #blind #stem cells #climate change

Why Keir Starmer can never be Clement Attlee

We apologise to overseas readers for the parochial references in this blog: but are our problems so different from yours?

As we write BBC Radio 4 is running a series about the 1945 General Election and the marvellously successful Labour Government that followed it.[1] For six years the United Kingdom had the most serendipitously achieving administration it had experienced since Elizabeth I. As he listens (assuming he has time) our current Prime Minister must ask himself “Why can’t I do what Clement Attlee did? Why is the concatenation of problems-defence, economy, social policy- so absolutely, stupendously overwhelming that even my own backbenchers are in such overwhelming revolt? [2]

No one doubts Starmer’s intelligence. Or courage. Or good intentions. However,the problems run too deep, and in our opinion are insoluble if the nation state is the means chosen to solve them. Clement Attlee inherited a world where companies, and the financial structures that supported them essentially existed at a national level (or within the imperial frameworks those nations had created) So the writ of Westminster really did run, and no one could afford to ignore it. Legislation passed by a British Government really did have the power to shape lives. Improve them sometimes,even, as the creation of the NHS and NATO so admirably demonstrated.

If Starmer’s government fails it will fall to Reform UK to make the necessary budgetary adjustments which Labour could not. A hint of the difficulties they may face comes from Warwickshire where a brave 18 year old has bravely taken the reigns of their new Council.[3] He states his belief as “Brexit, sovereignty and a strong and united family unit”.

Perfectly admirable and defensible beliefs, even if one disagrees with one or more of them intellectually. Unfortunately his manifesto raises many questions. Like : what is sovereignty? How far can it be sustained in a world where almost half of all available investment capital is in private hands? Can a country the size of the UK create and sustain its own industries against production runs in the power of giant corporations, or countries the size of China and India? How long did City States like Milan and Florence sustain their sovereignties against giant antagonists like Spain and France? Your Renaissance history will help here, but don’t worry: you won’t have to read it for long.

Antagonists they may seem, but both Starmer and Reform are two of a kind. A national government may have some power to alleviate, sometimes, if enough of its supporters let it. Its days of initiative and creation are long gone. Keir Starmer will never be Clement Attlee. And no one will be Winston Churchill either.

[1]https://www.bing.com/search?q=bbc+radio+series+1945+election&form=ANNTH1&refig=6F075FD8E25341758E4FFB72C8969982&pc=HCTS

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/26/no-10-government-talks-labour-rebels-attempt-quash-welfare-bill-revolt

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/26/reform-warwickshire-council-head-rob-howard-quits-after-five-weeks-leaving-18-year-old-in-charge

#Labour #Reform UK #politics #economic #nationalism #finance #trade #economics

Could a humble fungus cure cancer?

We have a of a confession here. We’ve always neglected fungi, that third mighty kingdom of life in favour of their more photogenic relatives, the animals and the plants. It’s a stupid oversight, as anyone who has enjoyed a glass of beer along with a bite of cheese can tell you. Not to mention Penicillium which was, after al the raison d’etre, the very fons et origio of these blogs which we so selflessly pen every day for your common benefit, gentle readers. Well now that’s all going to change. Fungi are on their way in from the cold starting with this intriguing piece from Emily Stern of the Daily Mail. Intriguing because it turns a bit of a baddie into a very Good Thing indeed.[1]

For many years researchers into old things like dead Pharaohs and dead Kings of Poland had a problem. A number of them kept dropping dead, due to the activities of a fungus called Aspergillus flavus[2] that lived in the shrouds and wrappings on the bodies of the extinguished rulers. Normally it performs a useful role in places like gardens and allotments by breaking down plant matter of all kinds. But get too close, breathe it in-and you could be a goner. So it has always been treated with a a wary circumspection. However, the ingenious Dr Sherry Gao and her co workers have discovered something else. Hidden inside the tissues of the meek mould are chemicals called asperigimycins. They seem to have anti leukaemia potentialities on their own: but, if combined with certain classes of lipid, they can get very good at it indeed. Read this from Emily’s matchless prose

They then added a lipid that’s also found in royal honey to another variant of asperigimycins and found the method killed just as many cancer cells as the drugs cytarabine and daunorubicin.

There’s a few lessons here for those who like a good moral tale. Firstly that Nature is full of hidden goodies about which we have no clue. Secondly even dangerous things can be turned to our advantage if you handle them with due care and caution(remember our old blog on Komodo dragons and antibiotics?) And thirdly, as in nature as in people: you never know which one is the one who saves your life. Treat them all with respect.And stop chopping down all the forests.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14839831/deadly-ancient-fungus-turns-cancer-fighting-powerhouse.html

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus

#cancer #leukaemia #fungus #medicine #health

Paracetamol from Plastic Bottles-this could be the start of something big

Remember how your mum always made you swallow water to wash down your headache pills? What if those pills had been made from the remains of a long discarded plastic bottle that some other child had been forced to undergo? According to the resourceful Nicola Davis of the Guardian, it’s about to happen.[1] And the implications are enormous.

A team lead by Professor Stephen Wallace of the University of Edinburgh has actually gone and turned old plastic bottles into medicine. Combining the very best in organic chemistry and genetic engineering, they have modified a strain of E. coli to make good old paracetamol, that standby of every household drugs stash the world over. [2] The details of how they do it may be read in the links supplied. But our interest today is somewhat different.

At last someone has found a use for all those mountains of ghastly plastic waste which so disfigure this once beautiful planet. It can be made into something which millions, no billions, of people can deploy every day: and to some beneficent purpose. And if paracetamol, why not other things? Meanwhile. fans of economics will note the creation of a demand., Soon people may be fighting each other in the streets to get the best plastic bottles to sell to wholesalers. Nations will go to war to gain access to those vast disgusting rafts of waste which currently drift around the oceans. There’s one sure way to modify the behaviour of the ignorant mass of humankind- Turn virtue into economics and let them make some money from it. The Professor and his team may have done just that.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jun/23/scientists-use-e-coli-bacteria-to-turn-plastic-waste-into-paracetamol-painkiller

[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-025-01845-5

#genetic engineering #organic chemistry #plastic #pollution #medicine

No that last blog does not make us a bunch of Communists

Every so often one of our blogs engenders some intriguing feedback . Alongside the usual welcome comments with all their nods and frowns, we occasionally get one that is a little-uh- longer, yet expresses its views with passionate clarity, to push euphemism to its limits. Such was the case today, when a reader alleged that our criticism of fossil fuel and tobacco companies was a sure sign that we were under the influence of Communists, who aim to tear down the free market system and replace it with a “nightmare of bureaucratic state socialism” of the sort found in places like Venezuela and North Korea. In particular the reader observed:

“What you’ve got to remember is that markets not governments are best at allocating resources. Intervening in fossil fuel markets is crypto socialism- it will only distort price signals, stifle innovation and lead to unintended consequences”

When we asked if this was true for immigration control as well, they replied

“Absolutely! Free markets mean the free movement of labour. Anything else is protectionism in disguise.

So, where does that leave us at LSS? Having worked for many years in the Government Employ and thereby known the ways of Civil Servants, we can more and more share the view that Free Markets really do work better. No, it’s the “unintended consequences” that pulls us up. Free markets can have those too. Totally unregulated sales of tobacco produced an epidemic of cancer. We suspect that over enthusiastic marketing of certain foods and drinks will one day produce an epidemic of obesity. As for gushing out vast quantities of poisonous mineral oil and burning it with heedless abandon-well we wish people had been better informed before this was started. To call for better product information, and to ask that consequences of free markets are cleaned up, or at least controlled, does not make one a Communist. Or anything like it.

Thanks for the feedback, and we appreciate that in view of this respondent’s employment, they must remain anonymous

#climate change #free markets # global warming #immigration #communism #socialism #capitalism #hayek #marx

Climate Change denial: latest round in a long war of deception

First deny there’s a problem. Then do all you can to delay a solution. Buy up politicians, scientists, bloggers, and bots. The tactics of the fossil fuel industry and outriding nations as they seek above all to protect their comfy lifestyles and exorbitant profits. It’s not just made abundantly clear in this report by Damien Carrington in the Guardian: it nails down every last nail to be had into the coffin lid. [1]

But we’ve seen it all before gentle readers. We recall walking down an alley in London in 1971 with a close relative who assured us there was no definite, provable link between smoking and cancer, OK!? (he died of the latter) Why was he able to state this? Because for decades the tobacco industry had managed a huge campaign of deception, obfuscation and general misinformation designed to give him and his peers every excuse they needed to continue their tragic addiction. Using exactly the same techniques now employed by climate change deniers, funnily enough.. The only difference was that they didn’t have the Interweb to turbocharge their propaganda and illusioning. This rather depressing link to the WHO explains the ghastly details to anyone who may want to know more about the fundamentals of human nature [2]

And what are these fundamentals, by the way? We don’t know them all But we can hazard a guess at some, provisional though we may well be

1 Some people will do anything to make some quick cash, Anything at all.

2 Many people will do anything to avoid facing the consequences of the vile little habits which they have acquired in the course of a lifetime of self indulgence and self deception.

3 Just because you are educated and slightly more far seeing than others around you does not give you tactical superiority in the current wars between the intelligent and our enemies They are incredibly cunning and well funded

4 This ain’t over yet. Keep a close eye on rising sea levels, if you want to live

We will be ready with further insights. inspirations and bons motifs in future blogs. Keep reading. And thanks for all the recent sigh ups and likes. Keep ’em coming.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/19/climate-misinformation-turning-crisis-into-catastrophe-ipie-report

[2]https://www.who.int/news/item/16-11-2023-new-who-campaign-highlights-tobacco-industry-tactics-to-influence-public-health-policies

#climate change #global warming #ecology #fossil fuels #tobacco #cancer

This is what awesome intelligence looks like

No we’re not writing about ourselves as some hardened readers may have already guessed. Because we couldn’t achieve what the researchers in these two stories, both from Nature Briefing, have indeed achieved. Sorry guv- we don’t have their intellectual bandwidth . Cognitive intricacy. Brains, in good old fashioned English But we know intelligence when we see it, and we know you do too.

Algorithms design remarkable enzymes Researchers have used computer algorithms to design highly efficient synthetic enzymes from scratch, reducing the number of tedious hands-on experiments needed to perfect them. The products facilitate a chemical reaction that no known natural protein can, with an efficiency similar to that typically achieved by naturally occurring enzymes. One design was also 100 times more efficient than similar enzymes previously crafted using artificial intelligence. In comparison to enzymes that occur in nature, the algorithm’s creations are less complex and can’t grapple with multi-step chemical reactions, but they’re proof that the approach has promise.Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Nature paper

The medical potential of designer enzymes will not be lost on readers as intelligent as our own. Yet some discoveries are to be relished not for their use, but for what they tell us about the world and our real place in it Try this for size

Dragon Man was a Denisovan Ancient proteins and mitochondrial DNA extracted from the ‘Dragon Man’ fossil — a cranium found in northeastern China that is at least 146,000 years old — have confirmed that it belonged to a Denisovan, an archaic human group. The fossil is the first skull to be definitively linked to the group, which sheds light on what the ancient people looked like, putting an end to decade-long speculation.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Cell paper & Science paper

Learning. Reason. Curiosity. Handy, aren’t they? Their absence can lead to different outcomes indeed. As the inhabitants of certain regions of the globe know only too well.

#protein #mRNA #medicine #health #evolution

Weekly round up: Animal chats, monkey business, patronising the working classes-and why Prudence is dear to us

a few stories to get you doing the work for a change

Hope for Alzheimers It’s an understated truth, but the general ageing of the population is one of the most significant trends in human history. That’s why doing everything we can to understand it is so important. We took heart from this new Alzheimer’s test which shows real promise The I paper via Apple News https://inews.co.uk/news/health/blood-test-scientists-alzheimers-nhs-3733762_{thanks to P seymour}

Nigel Farage is becoming the true tribune of the working class in Britain reports the acute mind of Andy Haldane. Because Farage realises that immigration and inter ethnic jealousies it engenders are the prime motivating force for most humans, way ahead of housing, health and certainly education.. And we have noticed a tendency among the educated classes(not Haldane) to sneer at ordinary people like builders and taxi drivers for nurturing these hatreds. Remember one thing: the high-consumption high-energy life styles of these so called educated classes are causing the ecological collapse which causes immigrants to flee to richer countries in the first place. Don’t be surprised if the lower orders , who are the first to encounter all the new neighbours, begin to act in emotional and inconvenient way. The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/08/nigel-farage-like-a-tribune-for-working-class-former-bank-of-england-economist-andy-haldane

Monkey Pandemic -echoes of Gibbon? Pandemics start small, but eventually cause the Decline and Fall of vast empires. That’s the clear lesson from History. Which is why we take this warning Sierra Leone mPox raises fear of spread from the redoubtable Nature Briefing very seriously indeed

A surge of mpox infections in Sierra Leone has stretched the country’s health-care system, sparking fears that the virus will spread to neighbouring countries in West Africa. Sierra Leone has confirmed more than 3,000 infections in the last month, and an analysis of viral genomes suggests there have been at least four times more infections than officially reported, says genomic epidemiologist Edyth Parker. The recent withdrawal of US funds for foreign aid will make curbing the outbreak even more difficult, experts say.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Virological.org analysis

If I could talk to the animals Ever since the early days of iconic simians like Washoe, Kanzi and Flipper the Dolphin, researchers have been hoping to crack the code of animal language. But would be Dr Doolittles should beware: such languages may not exist, warns this prescient article from the Conversation. Making the hunt for them a wild goose chase. Or should that be a mare’s nest? (that’s enough flippancy–ed)

https://theconversation.com/animals-cant-talk-like-humans-do-heres-why-the-hunt-for-their-languages-has-left-us-empty-handed-258321?utm_medium=email&utm_campai

Prudence always The Beatles White album was for us the least of their works. It seemed to be full of rather self indulgent essays in mediocrity and could have done with being cut down from two of those funny black shiny things to one. However, one song does stand out. Dear Prudence, covered by many, was always best in the original

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=beatles+dear+prudence&&mid=63C4B520F9B93453531963C4B520F9B934535319&&FORM=VRDGAR

#nigel farage #immigration #alzheimers #mPox #pandemic #linguistics

Faecal Pellets: Watch the good bacteria chase out the bad

Imagine you get bad news: antibiotic resistant bacteria have set up a colony in your intestine. OK here’s some worse: they could escape and invade your blood, kidneys, whatever. In which case you have real problems. This is a very real scenario which that brilliant researcher Dr Blair Merrick of Guys and St Thomas Hospital has sought to address. [1] as reported by James Gallagher of the BBC Why not, he has reasoned, get some good non resistant bacteria to chase out all those bad ones? It is his chosen method which may raise more than one eyebrow among you, gentle readers

According to Dr Merrick, the way to get the good bacteria into his subjects is via pills made of…..well, made of faecal matter, you know,,,poo. To quote James:

Dr Merrick says there are “really promising signals” that poo pills could help tackle the rising scourge of superbugs and that donor bacteria could be going to microbial war with the superbugs as they compete over food and space on the lining of the gut and either rid the body of them completely or “reduce them down to a level that doesn’t cause problems”.

We like this for all sorts of reasons. Firstly the gut really is such a good harbour of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Secondly, as in all things ecological, making its flora more diverse can only be a good thing. Thirdly, we think it has a clever little principle behind it. Antibiotic resistant bacteria have devoted a tiny bit more of their genome to this purpose than non resistant ones. In the world of ecological competition, where tiny differences can make an enormous difference to long term survival, this could be crucial. If done correctly, the good non resistant ones should out compete the bad ones.

It’s early days yet, and the early trials have only been on 41 subjects But as seasoned veterans of the long wars of antibiotics will know, we at LSS welcome every initiative, however unusual it may at first seem. We wish every success to Dr Merrick and his team and hope that their early accomplishments continue in the bigger trials to come,

_{thanks to Ms G lynch}

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyge290l4xo

#gut #microbiome #antibiotic resistant bacteria #health #medicine

Forensic Science shows why privatisation doesn’t work

Being an employee of the UK Forensic Science Service used to open doors back in the year 2000. Even if you you were too lowly to personally know the top people, you worked for them,: you saw them in corridors and said good morning. People as far away as San Francisco wanted to know about their pioneering DNA techniques, excellence in evidence handling and preservation, in new intellectual approaches like Bayesian statistics. It was like playing for Manchester United (then popular and successful exponents of the game of Association Football)

But lurking in the background was a disease that would kill this particular goose and the golden eggs it laid. “Private sector good, public sector bad” It was a mantra that had taken deadly root in the Thatcher years. The private sector, it held, was full of hard working go getting, sharp- suit- wearing entrepreneurs who cut through the red tape and got things done. Civil servants(the FSS and its predecessors were Civil Service bodies) were lazy, hidebound, slow, risk averse pen pushers who needed nothing so much as a good kick up the backside The result was that anything and everything (except police and armed forces) was sold to private investors. Eventually even the Forensic Science Service went under the hammer. The results are made clear in this story by Hannah Devlin of the Guardian [1] We cannot begin to do justice to the wasteland of failed justice, loss of expertise and collapsing confidence which has resulted. All we can do is quote this extract-and beg you to read the whole thing

Forensic science in England and Wales as currently configured isn’t working for anyone – not for the police, not for the lawyers or for the courts, not for the scientists themselves, and not for the general public who get caught up in the criminal justice system,” said Prof Angela Gallop, co-chair of the Westminster Commission on Forensic Science.

“Like a plane hurtling downwards in what has become known as a ‘graveyard spiral’, with the pilot in desperation making increasingly erratic decisions, it can only be a short time now before it impacts the ground.”

Perhaps the Manchester United metaphor was not so facile. Things sort of function- but at laughable shadow of their former glory.

This is what happens when a country is seized and held by a single doctrine. When the lazy self interested opinions of journalists and the gin sodden flies who hang around golf club bars are substituted for rational policy No one would deny that Forensic Science under the Government had its inefficiencies, or the odd passenger. It contained more than a few fools who loudly praised the tax cuts and bought the gas shares that Thatcherism created. Its even arguable that some industries did benefit from the injection of private capital and techniques (water is not one of them) But like water, the whole sorry mess now needs clearing up. And none of it ,none of it , needed to have happened. That’s the biggest injustice of all.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jun/09/forensic-science-crisis-miscarriages-of-justice-england-and-wales-report

#forensic science #justice #police #courts #evidence #economics #privatisation #thames water