Imagine if you were reading a newspaper in about April 1771. It would have been a confusing jumble of adverts, news and features. You might have seen a story about a new Bill in the House of Commons. A ship bearing new calicos had arrived from the East. A man called William Wilberforce was suggesting it might be a good idea to be a bit less beastly to black people. All very intriguing no doubt. But buried away on page 6 might have been a small item about a bloke called James Watt, who had invented some sort of new kettle that made things go round faster. And this was the real story, that one that would change the world forever.
So it is, we believe, with the new story about xenobots. Developed from the cells from the frog Xenopus laevis, they are microscopic robots which can be programmed to move, remember, report to control and carry out tasks at levels of precision which would have bben unimaginable back in the last century. We have two links for you; one to Stacey Liberatore of the Mail * and one to the original researchers at Tufts University. *
The potential step change in what we could do is immense. The researchers talk of drugs being delivered to the precise locations needed in the body. Teams of microrobots programmed to hack through soil, cleaning up radiation and industrial pollution. Is it fantasy to imagine them one day engineering the nucleic acids of individual cells, to remove harmful mutations? All of these possibilities and more are implied, transforming the world in the same way as Mr Watt and his collaborators. Sometimes the big stuff isn’t on the front page.
March has seen us put on quite a number of new direct followers, plus of course more hits on things like Facebook and Twitter. So a big thanks to all new readers, sorry that it is no longer possible to thank everyone individually. Clearly some of you have some intriguing websites and blogs-more power to you!
Thanks too to our story hunters-that select band who find and send in ideas they think we all should know about. This week has been entirely driven by them, and we welcome ideas from all and sundry.
So wishing all of you, of whatever belief, a Happy Easter, we earnestly recommend that you spend at least some of it listening to JS Bach‘s St Matthew Passion. Easter is about more than Hot Cross Buns, chocolate eggs and huge helpings of roast lamb, as thinkers through the ages have always known, and old JS proves the point overwhelmingly.
Bill Hwang may be about to make the biggest, and fastest, personal loss ever. No one knows exactly how much, but according to Bloomberg * it could be anywhere between $10 billion and $100 billion. The list of names-investors, clients, portfolios-is enough to make anyone sit up and notice. And this will have reverberations for months. How did it happen?
Because according to Lucy White of the Mail: *
In 2012, he admitted in a US lawsuit to insider trading and manipulating Chinese bank stocks. He stumped up £32million in fines and agreed to be barred from the industry.
How do you come back from that? Mr Hwang found a way . By trading, perfectly legally,as a single family office he was able to avoid the heavier regulation which falls on larger portfolio managers. Thus he returned to the game, and was once more playing with the big boys (you can read the Roll of Honour in our links below)
We at LSS admit to a sneaking regard for Mr Hwang’s courage and acumen in bouncing back from a setback which would have finished weaker spirits. As for the banks-they too are victims of the system, albeit one they have helped to create. Any system that is high risk, high reward and deregulated is inherently unstable. This time it is just Mr Hwang and his associates. But in 1929 and 2007 the damage was system wide-and catastrophic. A return to the post war golden days of regulated markets is impossible-the concentration of money and media power is too strong against it. But couldn’t we look once more at the more glaring areas from which the next crash might come? At least it might buy time.
The misfortunes of the giant container ship Ever Given in the Suez Canal have focussed attention on the sea, and how much we take it for granted. But for how much longer? LSS is an emollient website, more anxious to comfort the afflicted than afflict the comfortable-but sometimes we cannot ignore something controversial, especially if we feel its heart is essentially in The Right Place.
Such is the casewith Netflix’ new documentary Seaspiracy, which is causing an enormous storm on twitter and other social media. It comes out of a stable of hard hitting documentaries by Ali and Lucy Tabrizi and Kip Andersen, and takes a long cool look at the destructive and polluting practices of the fishing industry. We’ve got a couple of links for you * * * so you can judge for yourselves.
Once a film creates a big enough reaction, it creates its own defining moment. Think of Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth. Whatever side that you took, that was the instant at which global warming went-well, global really. So it may well prove with Seaspiracy. To us, anyone who challenges the brutal ignorant theory that we can go on looting the resources of this planet forever, with no attempt at conservation, is doing something right.
Regular followers of LSS will once again recall our interest in the problem of antibiotic-resistant pathogenic organisms(LSS passim) Humanity really has been at its worse with antibiotics. The initial advantage given by scientific discoveries in the 1940s has been lost. Like degenerate aristocrats squandering the family fortune, misuse by overprescription and mass distribrution in agriculture has led to the rise of deadly new resistant strains of microorganisms. If you want to know more, go the site of antibiotics research uk * linked below.
We salute the heroic efforts to develop new antibiotics. But, as we have noted before, there are other ways that should be tried as well. Bacteriophages are those little viruses which attack and kill bacteria. Funnily enough, they were being used against bacteria as early as the 1920s, particularly in places like Russia and Georgia. But because many of the papers were in languages like Georgian, and because along came antibiotics, they got overlooked in the West.
Now they are making a real comeback, and we at LSS are proud to have covered a tiny corner of what these amazing researchers have been up to. Latest good news arrives from the University of Leicester, England where Professor Martha Clokie and her team are producing phages to tackle organisms as diverse as Clostridium, Salmonella and Lyme disease. The last, carried by ticks on deer, can be a particularly devastating affliction for those who enjoy outdoor pastimes such as cycling and walking.
It’s good to see more and more examples of research popping up all around. Maybe not all of you humans are as bad as we say!
we thank Mr John Read of Buckinghamshire for this story
Here’s a look at some things to reflect on in the quiet peace of a Saturday afternoon before the football results.
Fake news It’s twenty five years since Daniel Goleman‘s groundbreaking Emotional Intelligence. And its resonances are still with us. It seems that people with greater EI are more able to sort out fact from fiction in the dodgy world of fake news. Here’s Tony Anderson and David Robertson in The Conversation:
Is altruism real? We all remember Richard Dawkins‘ Selfish Gene with its uber-Thatcherite resonances: “Selfishness is the only game in town, you’re a fool to help anyone but your closest relatives, the lesson from Nature (the thing, not the magazine) is every man(or moss or amoeba) for himself”was the mantra. Now Nature (the magazine, not the thing) reports a weird case where Bonobos seem to be adopting completely unrelated individuals into their families, like human fosterers. Aren’t they our closest relatives? Maybe Dickie boy and his accolytes could pop out to the jungle and explain to these creatures how misguided they are. Take your time, lads!
Adoption is rare in the animal kingdom, but now researchers have witnessed bonobos taking care of orphaned infants from outside their own communities. Two females named Marie and Chio, who live in the Luo Scientific Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, took charge of infants who were unrelated to any female in their family group. Researchers sometimes attribute adoptions to females practicing maternal care or helping their kin and advancing their genes, but those ideas can’t explain these new observations. Seeing caretaking for unrelated infants “blew me away”, says ethologist Cat Hobaiter.Science News | 4 min read Reference: Scientific Reports paper
Shakin’ all over That was more or less the reaction of physicist Mitesh Patel when he looked at his Large Hadron Collider and saw results which could change physics forever. Before you contact Amazon and order a large hadron collider for yourself; they’re quite big and expensive. Nature states:
Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have seen early hints of an undiscovered particle or interaction. More research is needed, but the results suggest an imbalance in how subatomic beauty quarks decay into two flavours of leptons: electrons and muons. If confirmed, that’s a violation of lepton flavour universality as described by the standard model of particle physics. “It’s too early to say if this genuinely is a deviation from the standard model, but the potential implications are such that these results are the most exciting thing I’ve done in 20 years in the field,” says physicist Mitesh Patel. “We were actually shaking when we first looked at the results.”BBC | 5 min read Reference: LHC seminar
Adaptation is two ways Environmentalists and biologists should love this remarkable story of how new types of coral are evolving to live alongside those big motorways and and bridges that stick out into the sea. Maybe Boris Johnson could attach a few to his new bridge to Ireland?
Luxury Dining Posher readers will know the name of Berry Brothers and Rudd, the famous London wine merchants. Ordinary people only get to drink it when some aristo drops a bottle in to thank you for some minor service performed. Now the immortal vinters of St James Street are extending their marketing to luxury dining in experiences. Could this be a place to spend some of that cash you’ve saved up in lockdown? or do you still prefer pizzas and curries?
As Friday night approaches we are sure that avid fans of cocktails will be going easy on the mixers, as news reaches us that all sorts of supplies may be held up by the blockage in the Suez Canal caused by the unfortunate misadvantures of the container ship Ever Given. We at LSS adscribe no blame! We know the Suez canal to be a narrow shallow waterway so treacherous that even sailors as experienced as Captain Birdseye hesitate before pointing their boats along it. The proper course, if readers will pardon the pun, is to wait for the full enquiry, after the flotillas of tugs and cranes have floated the unfortunate hulk once more and vital naval supplies such as rum, gin and bitters can flow once again unimpeded.
So we extend our sympathies and condolences to the stranded Captain and his crew, and heartily recommend this list of songs to play over the ship’s PA system, to keep up morale until help arrives.
10 Sailor Petula Clark Bit of an oldie, we admit. We last heard it in 2018 while stuck ourselves in a massive jam on the aptly-named Kew Bridge. As Londoners will know, Brentford and Kew still retain some of their antique nautical ambience, so it makes the cut nevertheless.
9Captain Of your Ship Reparata and the Delrons. Achieved its UK chart high water mark this very day, 26th March, back in 1968! It sound effects of ships’ horns and general gear make it an evocative favourite in the seafaring world to this day.
8 Sweet Painted Lady Elton John Less about navigational technique and more about the unsavoury recreations of discharged seamen during their leisure hours, this one too uses marine leitmotifs to evoke its atmosphere.
7 Sailing Rod Stewart The standby chorus for many a free spirited night in rugby club or public house, a real good one for the male bonding so often associated with mariners and their peculiar culture.
6 Harbour Lights The Platters We discovered this Shanty in the much underrated film noirMulholland Falls. We hope it won’t be long before the Captain and Crew of the Ever Given are snug in a real harbour instead of stuck looking at miles of empty desert and camels, while the traffic piles up behind like a bad day on the M25.
5 The Ship Song Nick Cave A little melancholy and world weary, it may be somehow appropriate for the feelings of all currently waiting their turn in the Gulf of Suez.
4 Dock of the Bay Otis Redding Another classic from 1968! Captures that sad sense of being washed up with nowhere to go “….sitting in the morning sun, I’ll be sitting when the evening comes…”sang Otis.
3 Nightboat to Cairo Madness Who can blame anyone for wanting to take a water taxi and escape to the nearby delights of this famous city? Who would not come back refreshed and ready to jump into the water and push the stricken vessel to freedom?
2 The Theme from Captain Pugwash Alright, not a chart song, and there are no lyrics, But you can hum along to the merry tune from the famous TV show, maintaining good spirits and the proper naval discipline as you go.
1 Ship of Fools Erasure We had entirely forgotten this old album filler from 1988. But for some reason several people have suggested it to us during the research for this little posting, so, without knowing why, it goes in at number one.
Our own nautical experience is confined to command of a small cabin cruiser on the River Thames at Bourne End, several decades ago. And we crashed that a couple of times. So we point no fingers, engage in no schandenfreunde, and abjure all smirking and quips. But we do say to all our readers- avast, splice the main brace and belay that second rum cocktail until happier times.
If you’re really stuck for something to do in the dog end of lock down, why not broaden your mind with some great reading? We at LSS take no credit for this, we’re just passing on some suggestions from a site called The Revelator-via that superb site Nature Briefings, Ten Great Green Books:
We at LSS see loads of good stuff about wild spaces and defending them. An inspiring tale of how the people of El Salvador fought to keep their water clean. There’s science fiction, something for kids, and tough legal fights against corporate giants. Which is why we have singled out this as the most intriguing and are going to shamelessly plug:
“A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet.”
LSS got all the above because we subscibe to Nature Briefings. Honestly, go to this link and sign up-you won’t be sorry. And they are thinking about bringing them out in other languages as well!
Were you ever at school, or university, with one of those super clever people? You know, the ones who came top in nearly every subject? And outside class they could draw, play the guitar, drink everyone under the table, crack the best jokes, and still manage to be amazingly popular and well liked? Years later you run across them on the internet and they are multimillionaires running large companies. Or you find their books cramming the science section in your local Waterstones, and you can’t even understand the blurb on the back.
But is there another class of person even beyond your average, run of the mill genius, a person so clever that they have changed the world forever? We think we have found a possible candidate. Ladies and Gentleman, may we introduce Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban Kt PC QC (1561-1626)or Lord Verulam as he was known to his friends. In our age, where it seems impossible to get anything done without intense specialisation, Bacon managed to be Attorney General, Lord Chancellor, Master Librarian, Counsellor to Monarchs, and inventor of the scientific method. And that was where he counted. Bacon it was who more or less invented inductive reasoning. That is, you come up with an idea, gather all the evidence you can, assess and test it, then make a final judgement, which can only ever be a probability statement. That’s why we have vaccines, space travel, electric lights, powered flight, and understand so much about the depths of space and time.
If you want to read more about Bacon, his friends and enemies, his sexual proclivities, and his achievements in general, the Wikipedia article below is a good place to start. He was born in the last days of the Renaissance, and paved the way for the Enlightenment, whose early thinkers such as Spinoza, Hobbes and Descartes were just over the horizon. That’s quite a guy.
News that infection with a rhinovirus such as common cold, can protect you from Coronavirus infections may yet turn out to be very significant indeed. Let’s start with the story; today we’ll use the BBC but most outlets are covering it. According to James Gallagher, * researchers at the University of Glasgow Virus Research Unit have found :
If rhinovirus and Sars-CoV-2 were released at the same time, only rhinovirus is successful. If rhinovirus had a 24-hour head start then Sars-CoV-2 does not get a look in. And even when Sars-CoV-2 had 24-hours to get started, rhinovirus boots it out.
What impresses us at LSS is the surprising, counter-intuitive nature of the discovery. When that happens, you usually find that you’re on to something bigger. Older readers will probably recall the furore1887, when the strange results of the Michelson-Morley experiment showed that the speed of light was the same in all directions. It eventually opened the way to the Theory of Relativity. Darwin and Wallace‘s observations of anomolous patterns in animal distribution eventually led to the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. And so we at LSS think the University of Glasgow researchers could be onto something very deep in the ways that cells and viruses control the processing of RNA and DNA, and with it the flow of information. If so, it could save many more lives indeed.
Learning, Science and Society 