We have been having a little trouble with IT handling lately (alright, we admit it-we’re dreadful). But a number of you have made comments about the piece we riffed on by Larry Elliott of TheGuardian last week. Sorry if we haven’t been able to load or reply to them, but we deeply appreciate the comments nevertheless.
However, it’s worth remembering that the real credit goes to Elliott, not us. He is always open minded, looks at evidence and tries to see things calmly and objectively. Virtues which we could all imitate. We will continue to channel his thoughts as and when we consider them to be pertinent to your interests, dearest readers.
LSS is a science post, by and large. The clue’s in the title. But it tends to be an applied science post. You know, this new antibiotic will do so and so, that new advance in power generation will save that many tonnes of carbon dioxide. And so on. Which is why, sometimes, we like to raise our eyes to some of the more abstract advances in pure science. After all, how long before they become applied?
Which is why we liked this one from Nature Briefings: Sniffing out the mysteries of how we smell. Someone once described the nose as ” a special kind of Gas Chromatograph” But how does it work? Is it the shape of the incoming molecules? Their weight? Something else? Remember some animals such as dogs, are much better at it than we are. And, by the way, what about taste? Before we leave you to the link, there’s this too. Like all the best modern studies, this one is multidisciplinary. Which implies a lot of different people collaborating, from lots of different countries. Could there just, possibly, be something in this multiculturalism after all?
There’s an old school of thought, particularly in the British Centre that had a lot of time for Germany and its post-war economic miracle. Exponents as diverse as Will Hutton and Corelli Barnett pointed to its world-class education system (particularly in technical subjects), its Mittelstand of SMEs and their associated financial arrangements, and of course its superior industrial relations. Certainly it was performing far ahead of the UK for many decades. Yet, like its football team, this former world-beater is losing its schwerpunkt. It’s not just the disastrous election results in the formerly Communist east, or the disastrous dependence on Russian energy. According to Larry Elliott of the Guardian (whom we have sometimes channelled before on these pages), the problems go much, much deeper.
Too much cultural capital has been invested in engineering, he asseverates. Names like Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes were once synonymous with economic excellence. But now Germany is too embedded in the era when those names ruled the worlds’ highways, while other nations have moved on. It’s all a bit like Edwardian Britain, which remained emotionally committed to the world of coal mines and cotton spinning, while the real action was already moving elsewhere
Will Germany enter a nosedive and lose all? The world remembers the consequences of the last time that happened and too many sensible people, both at home and abroad have already reacted to the siren call of AfD and its chums. Once great nations can transition to a more humble prosperity (the UK, France and Japan are examples here) and there is every reason to think that in the long run, Germany can do the same. But the real message for us all comes from the popular musical singing group Fleetwood Mac, heavily deployed by the Clinton campaign in 1992; Don’t stop Thinking about tomorrow
The first time we heard former Tory MP Rory Stewart , he sounded different. A man of integrity, we divined. They had just made him Prisons Minister or something, and there he was on Today on Radio 4 setting himself a target and declaring: “If I don’ hit it in a year, I’ll resign.” It may not surprise you to learn that he didn’t last long in the Conservative Party of those days. Since when he has drifted centrewards, even sharing a podcast with Labour Panjandrum Alister Campbell. And always endlessly gnawing on the same questions. “What is Truth?” “what is integrity” “why do Democracies sometimes make such Godawful decisions(think Trump, Brexit).
Now he has pushed off alone with a new series of podcasts called The Long History of Ignorance, a look at what constitutes true learning. It’s a play on the dual meaning of the word “ignorance” as the wisest of persons are always the first to admit that they don’t know. The theme has been raised before: old hands will recall the last, immortal, episode of Bronowski’s Ascent of Man TV, series from 1973. But here it is again, in modern clothes, neatly tucked up in short, easy to digest podcasts. Much of the first one covers ground we have often gone over on this blog, gentle reader. So you’ll be well clued-up before you get there. But we earnestly, earnestly recommend you give this one a shot. For there is no fool as great as the one who thinks himself cleverer than all the others.
Insects. Remember them? Those pesky little wasps buzzing around your glass of Pimms on a summer picnic? The scrapings from your windscreen after a long drive through the summer countryside? Don’t tell us you don’t know someone who didn’t used to curse them. Like most emotional reactions, this one was wrong too. Without them, the very ecological chains that support us could collapse. Permanently. Sooner than you imagine. Because all those naughty farmers with their pesticides, and all those naughty oil companies with their global warming, are going to do in our six-legged chums. Forever.
A little background for starters. writing in the Financial Times, called Where have all the Insects Gone?Manuela Saragosa provides an excellent short summary for the busy reader.[1] If you want to dig a little deeper, a leading entomologist recommends The Insect Crisis by Oliver Milman [2] as a jumping-off point. And us? We want to tease out one aspect which we think illustrates this crisis very nicely.
Everyone loves chocolate. Not quite so many will have names like Ceratopongidae, Forcipomyia and Euprojoannisia tripping off their tongues. But if they like chocolate, they should. For these are the tiny midges, the only living things , which can pollinate the Cacao plant, which as avid readers will recall is called Theobroma cacao, and so produce the world’s supply of chocolate. Which is not only a source of comfort and reassurance to multitudes, it is also worth $421 billion according to commercial experts MarkNtel. Is this really going to happen? Well according to the Natural History Museum[4] the crop is just about hanging on this year. But the midges are reeling from loss of habitat, mainly due to global warming, so don’t just cross your fingers. And finally, to any fool who blusters we can’t afford to do anything about climate change, let this figure be their warning. ,
Zapping Climate change: One thing we all know for certain. That old sea is marching up the beaches and into our homes and towns sooner than we know it. How to stop it? More cheaply, that is, than building colossally expensive barriers of concrete and steel. One answer might be to fuse natural sand into hard deposits via the medium of huge electric discharges, a bit like lightning, Here’s Stephen Luntz for IFL Science:
India strides in Space It’s not what they’ve found, it’s the way that this forward-looking nation is progressing which impresses us. Indian mission reveals molten moon from Nature Briefings. Compare that to the former Imperial master, which has just come out of fourteen years navel gazing at past glories!
The first-ever analysis of soil near the Moon’s south pole has found further evidence that the lunar surface melted shortly after it formed. The data come from India’s pioneering Chandrayaan-3 mission, which deployed a rover on the Moon last August that found the soil mainly comprised the mineral ferroan anorthosite. Previous landers have found similar results at other locations, suggesting the composition of the surface is uniform. This supports the theory that the Moon originated from material scattered into space when a large impactor struck the newly formed Earth.Nature | 4 min read Reference: Nature paper
No way back? Even if by some miracle we suddenly reduce carbon burning and get to net zero, there’s still all that old CO2 up there, warming us like chickens in an oven. Scary stuff, according to James Dyke and his mates at The Conversation:
Lung cancer vaccine is good news Every time you meet an anti-vaxxer, ask them about their next bright idea about lung cancer. Meanwhile people who actually think have come up with what may be a working vaccine against this dread disease. We wish them luck: here’s Andrew Gregory for The Guardian
Raising our hat to Gussie A few years ago (LSS 3 6 2021) we published a tribute to the great Gussie Fink-Nottle, long time friend of Bertie Wooster and keen student of the order Salamandridae in general, as represented by newts in particular. Well now a colony of these ancient creatures has made a base in our garden pond. And so we join Gussie as custodians of these Carboniferous chums. And hope, when finaces allow, to get some tree ferns to accompany them!
It’s not often we pull together two apparently unconnected stories. The one, a tragedy that has befallen a single family in Bradford in the north of England. The other a series of mass protests in far away India, What is the connection? Violence against women of course, a common theme on this blog.
Let’s start with Bradford.[1] Jane Dalton, Independent ; A poor mother and her three children have been murdered, by fire, in the home where they should have felt safe and secure. The suspect? (for that is all he is at this stage1 ) A man, of course. Does that surprise you, gentle reader? Even if a different culprit is apprehended, we bet it ‘ll be a man. Come on. how often do women set fire to homes with children in them?
On to India. A lady Doctor ( a Doctor, goddammit-what profession is more useful than a Doctor?) was raped and murdered while on duty in a hospital in Kolkata. And finally, after centuries of patriarchy, patronising and all round oppression, Indian women have had enough. To their credit, so have many men too. Now they have risen in a series of furious protests which threaten to change that country forever. [2] Kathryn Armstrong, BBC. Yet amid all the outrage, there is hope here, at least for us.
For what is hope? In the twentieth century it was supposed to have something to do with advanced nations like the USA or USSR building huge numbers of big bright shiny things and making everyone happy and radiant. Poorer nations, and women, were somehow also rans, extras in a Big White Male movie. But what if real hope is when the poor and the oppressed begin to pull themselves out of their pit and cast off their chains? There’s more of them. That’s a lot more hope to go round.
1 LSS is a firm believer in the principle of innocent until proven guilty
A few years ago (LSS 15 12 20) we published a short blog in praise of the work of the great Zdenek Burian. Although he died in 1981, when it comes to Paleoartists he has always been our main, main man. So who can fill such eminent shoes, especially when the competition is so fierce?
We’d like to propose the work of Karen Carr as a starter. We’d like to tell you why we think her work is so good. Why it really does it for us. There’s just one snag. We have no training in art, criticism, and struggle to draw a dry roasted peanut from a bag, let alone hang out at the Slade School of Art. But we can point you to her website, to which we link here. [1] Obviously, we cannot reproduce directly here, for copyright reasons (the images at the top are stock) But we humbly beg you to pause over your coffee or tea and take a dive into Karen’s world. See ancient sharks in furious pursuit in some forgotten Devonian ocean. Delight as dinosaurs munch their way through a sunny Cretaceous landscape (and each other). Cringe at the unappealing table manners of our earliest ancestors as they too polish off a late lunch, squatted on the haunches of some unfortunate Deinotherium. Would a nice Cabernet Sauvignon have partnered that , chaps?
There cannot be a more abstract form of art than paleoart, for it depicts things that do not exist. Yet it screams for realism, depth and action. Above all, the good ones create worlds that are enticing , that you want to climb inside. Just like the great masters of the Renaissance or Baroque did in their landscapes. And by the way, anyone for Edward Hopper?. Yet Karen can do something they couldn’t. Animations. Our last tip is to watch as the ancient amphibian Eryops swims across the screen like a newt in a garden pond-it’s distant, distant great grandchild. Isn’t that worth just a couple of minutes away from Trump v Harris?
Anyone turning on their computer first thing in the morning encounters a tidal wave of stories. As well as your regular newsfeeds (things we used to call newspapers and magazines) your service provider will unleash a torrent of clickbait, intriguing little stories designed to hook you in like a rookie haddock. And doubtless your more excitable and nervous friends will be bombarding you with snippets and scrapes from their own feeds, showing how we are going to hell in a handbasket and Enoch was right all along. How to sort the wheat from the chaff? Or to put it even more bluntly, which of the million or so articles are you really going to benefit from reading ?
Enter the cool, clear mind of Devi Sridhar, Professor of Public Health at Edinburgh University. Older readers will recall her as one of the saner media guides we knew during the long-ago Covid-19 pandemic. Today she pops up in the Guardian, advising us on a different topic Ostensibly it is about the Perils of Drink. Actually, it is an excellent guide to navigating these seas of information. And this is why we think it works;
1 Poses the question in a thoughtful and nuanced way and contrasts the issues of heavy drinking with moderate drinking
2 Thorough review of the evidence. Look carefully at the authority she cites. It’s the World Health Organisation. No they are not perfect; but are they likely, on balance to be more reliable than some cowboy internet site in Texas?
3 Back up studies she cites (NHS, Canadian Government) are more of the same Note how the hyperlinks are to equally reputable bodies
4Uncontrolled studies and the Red wine myth The idea that this stuff might actually be good for you brought hope and comfort to millions. However, as the good professor notes
……., some of these studies didn’t control for the fact that red wine drinkers were more likely to be educated, wealthy, physically active, eat vegetables and have health insurance. In 2006, in a new analysis that controlled for health-affecting variables, the benefits of drinking red wine weren’t found. Since then, increasing evidence has shown that even one glass of wine a day increases the risk of high blood pressure and heart problems.
5 Who pays the piper? Watch carefully who funds studies any way. For, as she notes
The alcohol industry has been savvy here and funded studies that – surprise, surprise – show the benefits of moderate drinking. This is a lesson in why you should always look at who funds the study, and whether there’s a conflict of interest. The muddying of studies by commercial interests [is] a tactic that was also famously used by the tobacco industry ………
and finally.… The writer declares and interest She admits she is in the public health game and, being fallible, occasionally enjoys the odd tipple herself
Read a few less items, and read the ones you choose carefully. Always ask: who benefits? Does this tell me what I want to hear? Why has this been posted?
Successful science in one area can produce unexpected benefits all round. That’s always been our doctrine at LSS. Think of how the slightly esoteric discoveries of Franklin, Watson and Crick spawned whole new areas of learning and achievement from medical science to Crime Scene Investigation. Today we’ve got two stories which nicely demonstrate our little hypothesis in action.
The first by Maiya Focht of the Mail describes the intriguing way that a class of drugs called prostanoids, normally used to help women in labour, may actually help with brain conditions such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons. [1] It seems they may act by clearing the progressive accumulation of cellular debris, proteins and so on which seem to impede brain function as the years pass. It’s early days still, but it’s fascinating how a surprise arrival from one area of investigation can suddenly game-change a different one.
So, more power to multidisciplinary teams? Could be a way forward in the dreadful condition of inflammatory bowel disease, which can make life miserable for untold numbers of sufferers. Have a look at this Hope for Inflammatory Bowel Disease from Nature Briefings( with deep link for all you intellectuals) Look at the way it combines genetics, immunology and population studies. Some kind of lesson in there, maybe, huh?
Several recent studies offer insights into the murky and complex causes of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Changes in the activity of a gene called ETS2 that is important to immune activity could contribute to some cases of the disease by promoting inflammation.Some people with IBD make antibodies that disable a protein called IL-10, which has anti-inflammatory effects in the gut.An analysis of how populations of gut bacteria adapt to living in inflamed tissue could lead to ways to predict how bad a case of IBD might get, monitor its progression and identify which therapies might help.“Not every inflammatory bowel disease patient who walks in the door is the same,” says immunologist David Artis. “If we can map that difference to some extent, I think we’re going to be able to better treat those people.”Nature | 6 min read References: Nature paper, The New England Journal of Medicine paper & Cell Host & Microbe paper
Now we don’t want to sound like the late,great Dr Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974). But we humbly observe one thing. Knowledge grows exponentially. What’s more, it’s the real driver of economic growth, not fiscal theories and econometric models. It was the refining of iron that changed the world, not the refining of gold. The right way to change the world for the better is to palce your bets on Universities, research institutes and hospital laboratories. from them alone will come the better life for us all.
Learning, Science and Society 