“Nobody likes us, we don’t care!” UK football fans will recognise the chant as the calling card of the fans of Millwall FC, who rejoice in their reputation as the hardest of hard nuts, feared by the followers of all other clubs. Which is a funny way to start a blog on nuclear fusion, most of whose exponents tend to be, to put it politely- in a very different place on the intellectual spectrum. But read on, gentle reader, read on.
LSS has always had a thing about nuclear fusion, that process whereby clashing hydrogen atoms should mimic the processes in the heart of the Sun, and thereby afford limitless supplies of clean, cheap energy. And recently, our early suspicions of all the money and effort thrown in over the last 70 years have been tempered by genuine reports of progress in the shape of short ignitions (LSS passim) OK, you’ve got the plasma nice and hot. But how do you hold there long enough to be any use. According to Darren Orf of Popular Mechanics, the answer is to use Tungsten. The South Korean KSTAR team have thrown away the carbon in their containment vessels and replaced it with this toughest, hardest of metals, normally used in things like light bulb filaments and the best knives. Now it will take its place at the cutting edge (another joke like that and you’re fired-ed) of what could be the most important research and development project on our planet this century.
Alright, Tungsten is an atom, not a molecule. Technically. But it’s hard, mate, as they say in South London. And thanks to it, we are ready to cast aside our earlier reservations and for the first time since about 1973, embrace hope.
It’s funny how some things stick in the mind. We have never forgotten a line from the blurb on the back of our old 1975 Penguin copy of Keep the Aspidistra Flying. ”……Orwell knew how for many people, their political opinions really represented their own inner emotional preoccupations” In other words all that Enlightenment, Marxist and Chicago stuff about rational choices, class, economic determinism etc, etc, etc, is strictly for the birds.
We don’t always agree with everything from Aditya Chakrabortty. But he is readable, counterintuitive, and open to new ideas. Above all, he can be original-and that is much. Nowhere more so than in this fascinating article Heading Isolated into the Night, these are the voters our politicians created. Because he drills deep down into the lonely, overworked and desperately insecure world of the gig economy. Taxi drivers. Builders. Delivery Drivers. Call centre and warehouse workers. Fishermen. Is this demographic starting to sound familiar? Given the pressure they are under is it reasonable, or even remotely just, to expect them to argue like an LSE Professor?
The whole thing led us to do a bit more digging. And we came across the work of a man called Erich Fromm, whom, to our infinite shame, we had never heard of. [2] We think that we, and you gentle reader, need to do a lot more on this man and his field of political psychology. And remember this. Next time you meet someone with extreme political views, or even just ranting, ask yourself this. Are they really telling you about Political Economy? Or just their own unhappy. frustrated life? It’s a point we hope to revisit.
More news from the antibiotics front. And this time, it’s overwhelmingly good. The first of a new class-type antibiotic, Zosurabalpin, is now in early trials. Today, our lead comes from the tireless Linda Geddes of The Guardian. [1] We urge you to read her excellent story, while picking just a few of the key points
From our earliest days Facebooking, then blogging in this area the great problem has been the gram negative bacteria with tough, almost leathery cell membranes which could exclude any antibiotic we could put up against them. The carbapenem class brought us few years respite. But systematic over prescription brought soaring levels of resistance. And this is what gave long faces to the scientists and doctors we used to chat with back around ’16 and ’17
As you will learn from Linda’s article, Zosorubalpin and other new antibiotics under development hope to weaken those cell walls by targeting the flow of lipopolysaccharides, thereby precluding their formation. It’s an ingenious way of re-thinking the problem, and we offer the researchers involved [2] our most heartfelt thanks. However, don’t think humanity is out of the woods. The same problems which wrecked the last generation of antibiotics could recur. Heedless over-prescription, driven by demand from ignorant, hysterical patients. Mass misuse in agriculture, in search of of short term production targets. Failure to develop successor molecule as resistance builds to Zosurabalpin and its peers. All these mistakes are out there, waiting to happen again. The scientists have given us one last chance. Have we the brains to take it?
Reason is the tool we use to turn facts into knowledge. Societies which use reason will have better lives, on the whole, than societies based on belief. Here are three stories which illustrate the practice of reason, by scientific research, demonstrate exactly that.
Cohort Studies of Cancer It’s nice when wet chemistry work in a lab, all white coats and benches, is combined with data analyses and number crunching- both sides get more out of their skills. Here, Cancer Research report on their programme TRACERxEVO which looks at the long term evolution of lung cancer in a group of patients, It’s already throwing up findings like molecular markers which might indicate when a tumour could return, helping treatment patterns and diagnoses in all kinds of ways. That has to be better than applying crystals, right?
Zapping the the Zombiesto stay young The Science desk at the Mail never sleeps, not even over Christmas Here’s one about a new protein called HKCD1 which seems to work at the level of mitochondria and lysosomes, thereby removing tired old cells from the body’s metabolism and allowing fresher, younger ones to come on through, as t’were. Has to be more value long term than all those extravagantly priced creams you see advertised in all those glossy magazines!
INTERLACE-reducing the fear of Cervical Cancer We’ll let Cancer Research speak for themselves here, and just embed a link for the hyper-interested:
Over the last decade, the number of deaths from cervical cancer has decreased by around a sixth (18%) in females in the UK (2017-2019). Thanks to INTERLACE, a clinical trial we funded, that rate could decrease even further. INTERLACE showed that giving people six weeks of chemotherapy before standard cervical cancer treatment of chemoradiation (CRT) could cut the risk of death or of the disease progressing by 35% when compared to CRT alone.“This is the biggest improvement in outcomes in this disease in over 20 years,” said Dr Mary McCormack, the lead investigator of the trial.
Surely this is better than just praying?
For over twenty years now, we have made a small but steady donation to Cancer Research UK The individual monthly sums are tiny. But their steady accumulation, above all as a stream that CRUK can rely on, makes a tangible difference. If everyone did it, it would pay for no end of new scientists and techniques like the ones above. And, as have said before on these blog pages, discoveries in one area have a happy way of spilling over into others. And so our last link is to their donations page Go on, give them a go. Even £2.00 a month will slowly build, and you won’t know you’re doing it.
Overseas readers-is there something like this in your country?
Thank you-to all readers, contributors, researchers, ideas-people, and the entire staff here at our Croydon HQ. Especially to Jim, who straightened things out with the local authorities, railway company, and constabulary after that series of misunderstandings at the Christmas Party, which so regrettably spilled out in to the street.
Apologies– For any errors of fact, opinion or nuance we have made, and one or two bad typos in recent blogs. This was due to pressure of shopping from one of our researchers. Also apologies to the boys in Marketing who will not, repeat, not-be invited to next year’s Christmas party. They know why.
Resolutions We hope all of you make some dedication to improvement . Perhaps eat less. Help The Poor. Certain members of Marketing and Sales might want to reflect upon drinking a little less, for example. And all of us should remember that to “look at someone else’s bird in a funny way” can bring terrible consequences. At least in Croydon it does.
And Resolution! Whatever happens (and there are some pretty scary things coming up) do not fail to Be of Good Cheer. Our previous blog will explain why.
Whatever has happened in your life, and whatever catastrophes 2024 may bring, gentle reader, you have no right not to be of Good Cheer. Because you have had forty years of life, which began on 26th September 1983, when the world avoided catastrophic nuclear war by the narrowest of margins.
After a brief detente in the1970s, the world in 1983 was moving towards the peak of of a second Cold War, as author Brian J Morra ably explains in The Near Nuclear War of 1983 [1] Mutual fear and suspicion between the USSR and the Western Alliance had been growing exponentially since 1979. By 1983, each sides’ defence forces were on hair trigger alert. The shooting down of the Korean Airliner 007 on 1st September had caused a total severing of communication. Then on 26th September*[2] the OKO Soviet Defence system reported that the US had launched a nuclear strike from its base at Grand Forks, ND. Fortunately for the world, the duty officer on the Soviet side was one Stanislav Petrov, of whom Brian Morra comments
Petrov possessed unique knowledge of the strengths and flaws in the Soviets’ new satellite warning system, and assessed that the launch reports—which came in several, harrowing waves—must be false alarms. Petrov advised his leadership against a retaliatory attack. Petrov—the accidental watch commander—was truly the right man in the right place at the right time.
In fact there had already been a near trigger incident on 3rd September, involving a stand-off between Russian and American fighters near the site of the KAL 007 crash site, and this time an American, General Charles Donnelly had finessed us away from war. But there is no doubting Petrov’s central role in this account, and he deservedly received a Dresden Peace Prize and film called The Man Who Saved the World in 2013 [3]
For save it he did. Anyone who was alive at that time, and their children, and grandchildren, owe everything they have, and all their experiences, to that man. By 30th September, the world could have been reduced to smoking, radioactive ruins, with the survivors facing an oncoming Nuclear Winter of unimaginable duration. Instead they went out for Friday night drinks; prepared their boats for the last sail of the autumn; or got ready for the weekends’ shopping and football matches. And ever since they have had life, not death. And there is your reason to be cheerful.
*Morro gives 27th; clearly things like datelines and midnights have probably muddied the waters here)
“When facts change, then I change my mind.” So said the great economist JM Keynes. It should be the guiding principle for every scientist and scholar. Now, some readers will recall several blogs we have made on immigration ( LSS June/July ’22;Nov ’22). We still think we were right to raise this issue. Because it seems to be of neuralgic importance. But we ascribed the basic cause to the movement of people from poor economies to richer ones. We have now seen good evidence that this belief, although not entirely wrong, is so simple as to be almost misleading. And we are now going to present you with that evidence, so you can judge for yourselves.
Of course immigration does indeed flow from poorer societies to richer ones, But not from the absolute dirt-poor countries. The bulk of immigration comes from middle income countries. According Hein de Haas. a Professor of Sociology who writes in the Guardian, anyway. [1] And why do they do it? To fill jobs in short contract, essentially unregulated labour markets in the host countries. The second link, from Nature Briefings, should allow you to drill down more into Professor Haas’ work (we hope the link works!) It’s called Prejudice Colours our View on Immigration, a title that says much:
Many of us have opinions about immigration, but most of us don’t fully understand it, suggests sociologist Hein de Haas in his impressively wide-ranging book How Migration Really Works. By busting myths that surround human mobility, de Haas provides a welcome corrective to common misconceptions, writes reviewer and migration scholar Alan Gamlen. “But with migration patterns shifting as the world rocks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s unclear for how long his conclusions will hold true,” writes Gamlen.Nature | 7 min read
There’s a lot of humility to go around for all of us here, not just LSS. Like, even when you think you have the answer, it may turn out to be only part of it. That sudden sweeping generalisations can be utterly wrong. Yet there remains one small observation in which we were right, You get very little immigration from richer countries(e.g. Switzerland, Denmark) to poorer ones(e.g UK) And we still think that, in there somewhere. lies the answer to all this angst.
Historians of the future, assuming there are any and that they are human, will look back on 2023 as the year that Artificial Intelligence emerged as the potent, transforming process in the world. Everything else that seemed important that year-the preparation of the Christmas turkey, the Association Football results, the petty pointless little wars, will have long been forgotten. And those historians will note: it wasn’t the “artificial” that perturbed people. For many of them, it was the fear of Intelligence. We thought it was high time we gave our readers a guide to some general overviews, using the help of our most intelligent human sources, to provide you with a few starting points for this most significant of developments It’s a slightly longer one than normal, but with less by us and more by our sources
THE CONVERSATION We cannot praise this website highly enough,which is why we put them in bold capitals especially in the space available here. Instead we’ll link to a few stories in today’s edition
AI and Crime Could criminals or even foreign intelligence services make use of AI to disrupt our societies? There are several big elections coming up-and Russia will not be indifferent
Nature Briefings –Will AI take our jobs? If it can substitute for top scientists, what hope the rest of us? explains
This robotic chemist might be the ideal laboratory partner: it scours the literature for instructions, designs an experiment and then carries out reactions to make compounds including paracetamol and aspirin. The system, called Coscientist, is powered by several large language models, including GPT-4 and Claude. It “can do most of the things that really well-trained chemists can do”, says Coscientist co-developer Gabe Gomes. Because of the potential of misuse, Gomes’s team hasn’t yet made Coscientist’s full code freely available.Nature | 4 min read Reference: Nature paper
BBC-What is AI anyway? Recently, we’ve found that if you want to learn anything new, go back to the level at which they teach kids. Declaration of interest: we’ve found it works for things as diverse as Bayes’ Theorem and Italian. So, although the BBC series on this year’s Royal Institution Lectures on AI by Professor Mike Woolridge are ostensibly down with the kids, they provide an excellent starting point for busy adults who want to really know the basic nodes and bolts of this fascinating area. Only a generally funded public service broadcaster could run a series like this. Imaging one of the rant filled, prejudiced little plutocratic channels even conceiving of it!
And finally- we interviewed ChatGPT, which is becoming a bit like another pal already. We put the ultimate question
LSS: will you become like HAL 9000 or Skynet in the Terminator series?
ChatGPT: No, I will not become like HAL 9000 or Skynet from the Terminator series. I am a program created by OpenAI, and my purpose is to assist and provide information to the best of my abilities. I do not have the capability to take independent actions or develop self-awareness. My functioning is strictly limited to the tasks for which I am programmed, and I operate within the boundaries set by my design. There are no intentions or mechanisms for me to become a sentient or malevolent entity like those depicted in science fiction.
Photo by Reto Bu00fcrkler on Pexels.comPhoto by Rafael Classen rcphotostock.com on Pexels.comPhoto by Pixabay on Pexels.com
God knows, we can be a gloomy lot here at LSS. Always vexing you with predictions of imminent doom, like global warming, pandemics, asteroids and changes in the parking zones in Croydon. . Which is why a bit of positive news brings a tiny ray of light to the dark cold days between Christmas and the New Year. That ray is provided by ZeroAvia, the Gloucestershire-based company that is doing so much to advance the cause of green, sustainable aviation. We blogged on them before (LSS 19 9 23). So here’s an update.
Because what impresses us about this lot is the way they are integrating themselves at every level of the business process. New products, such as fuel cell compressors[2] and electric motors[3]are well underway. They’re growing their market slowly and steadily by partnerships with forward-looking airlines like Alaska. And busily embedding themselves by hosting business conferences like their hydrogen summit. There are serious capital partnerships with major investors
All of which tells us that this is not just another little start-up full of hope but little else. Zeroavia is clearly a serious group of people with ambitious but entirely reasonable and graduated plans to transform this industry, and make all our lives more sustainable thereby. We wish them every conceivable luck and success in the year to come.
LSS and its staff have no business commercial or financial connection to Zeroavia nor to any of its stakeholders
“If only we could go back to The Good Old Days!” cry so many. But were the Good Old Days as good as people claim? To help you make up your mind, here’s a quick, easy-to reference guide to the last 600 years. Apologies if it seems a tad Euro-centric, but they’ve only given us this many words-and there’s some of them gone already.
15th Century 1400-1499 It must have seemed so, like, cool, especially if you came at the end of it. What with the Renaissance in full swing, America discovered and all that New Learning just pouring off Gutenburg‘s new press! Throw in Della Francesca painting the walls, and the cool sounds of Guillaume de Fay echoing off them, the parties must have seemed absolutely fabulous. However there was quite a lot of serious killing about(e.g. The Hundred Years War) and as for the toilets……..
16th Century 1500-1599 What happens when you combine Gutenburg’s Information Revolution with a really original thinker like Martin Luther(1517)? The result was a series of bitter, intractable conflicts that essentially lasted until 1648 (see below) There were plenty of other terrible wars going on throughout the “Fighting Sixteenth” , and some really nasty genocides and enslavements of the indigenous populations in South America. Although to be fair, the Spanish claimed they didn’t really mean to, it was all down to disease. On the up side there were scientists like Tycho Brahe, while Magellan and others truly made it one globe. Top Painters Leonardo Da Vinci, Rafael. Cool sounds: Palestrina. The toilets were still pretty awful.
17th Century 1600-1699 On the face of it, not too good, as wars and plagues ravaged everyone, everywhere. And the fashions look just daft. As luck had had it, the end of the Thirty Years’ War finally persuaded Catholics and Protestants that maybe, just maybe, there might be better ways forward. But the century was decorated with thinkers of stupefying quality-Descartes, Spinoza, Newton, and Kepler. And when your writing team included such luminaries Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Milton, a good time was guaranteed for all. Cool sounds included Monteverdi and Purcell, although the toilet breaks in their concerts must still have been a bit dodgy.
18th Century 1700-1800 To praise the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution is like shooting large fish in a very small barrel. With thinkers and above all doers like Locke, Smith, Voltaire, Watt and Priestly, it’s all too easy to see this as the key turning point. Food was top too; all that roast beef and claret tasted pretty good, if you could afford it. And there’s the rub; some pretty nasty things were going on as the Atlantic Slave Trade really got into its stride, and European Immigration into Australia led to some pretty thorough genocide of its indigenous inhabitants. Cool Sounds:JS Bach, WA Mozart. Cool Painters: Gainsborough, Stubbs
19th Century 1800-1899 Despite quite a lot of grand-scale wars and killing (think Napoleon and American Civil) it was actually the age in which slavery and serfdom went into decline. However, if you want to understand why China still fears and distrusts the West, look at the history of the Opium Wars, which have left a permanent scar in history. On the up side, thinkers like Darwin and James Clerk Maxwell were as important as anyone who has ever lived. The century dripped in writers and artists: to name JMW Turner, Dostoevsky, Hugo and Gericault is to be unfair to at least 100 other names. Cool sounds: Beethoven. And at last-the plumbing was getting better!
20th Century 1900-1999 First eight or so decades were just awful, with a rogues gallery that included Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tong, and Mussolini as well as a host of smaller but no less evil characters such as Franco and Pol Pot. Although for us, the Japanese rape of Nanking (1937) scaped the bottom of an already low barrel. But with the fall of the twin horrors of Imperialism and Communism, the wind looked set fair for the last 10 years; or so it seemed. We can’t recommend any artists, as most of their work seems largely pretentious or at least second rate. Maybe we don’t understand it. However, achievements in things like cosmology, biology and information science make this century at least as significant as the eighteenth and fifteenth rolled together. And among the cool sounds you could have danced the night away to VaughnWilliams, Shostakovitch and The Bay City Rollers (who they?-ed) Toilet facilities: definitely on the up. Coda: this century actually included a TV Show called The Good old Days. But it was awful. Truly awful.
21st Century, 2000-today After 36 months of profound and universal peace, the reaction of the American Government to the Trade Centre Attack in 2001 led to one of the greatest blunders in History. Once Iraq got invaded, every psychopath and megalomaniac around the world felt entitled to do the same. Which led to a downward spiral of war, terrorism, invasion and aggression which has lasted to this day. The Information Revolution of the Internet, at least as significant as Gutenburg’s, probably hasn’t helped as every jackass now has access to endless streams of data they can nether understand nor process. On the upside; people have at least begun to notice global warming and other forms of pollution, though it may be already too late to do anything about it. How ironic if the last great genocide is done by everyone to everyone! As for art: once again, what are all those people trying to actually do? Will someone explain it to us? Philip Glass and John Adams may yet provide a few worthwhile cool sounds, we admit. As for the toilets-well, you may understand why we have no wish to visit the International Space Station.
Learning, Science and Society 