• 

• 

• 

You won’t make sense of te modern world without knowing about Science. Whether you’re an investor, a teacher, someone with a career to begin, or just an ordianary citizen, you need to know what scientists are doing now-for that is what we’ll all be doing in five years. Remember something called DNA in crime scene investigation. So here, in no particular order are some of the Science sites we visit to run up your daily read

Nature World’s foremost science Journal- but the print edition is aimed fairly and squarely at the professionals. To reach out, they have started Nature Briefings-and it’s a winner. They pick the very best science news from Nature and elsewhere and then serve up a nice summary, with clicks to longer articles and/or the original paper. You’ll often see us reference them here. You can even arrange to have regular updates by email-and it’s all free.

Nature Briefing | Nature

New Scientist Bright and lively (for a science mag-it’s notTake a Break) it was part of the wave of more accessible science in the 1960’s,alongside TV shows like Tomorrows World and Horizon– accessible tone, serious integrity unquestionable. Warning to cheapskates-quite a lot of the online stuff is paywalled. Oh well-we’ve all got a living to make!

New Scientist | Science news and science articles from New Scientist

Our friends across the pond: If you put “Science” in your search engine you’ll get two results, as follows

Science Magazine– published by Phys.org, the articles are clickable all the way down. Great resource for teachers

Phys.org – Feature Stories, Weblog News, Reports

Science The worthy Journal of the worthy American Association for The Advancement of Science, it’s another premier league heavy. There are some good summary and warm up articles before you hit the serious papers, but be warned-this one’s paywalled like Hadrian’s as well.

Science | AAAS (sciencemag.org)

Live Science If the ones above are the serious older family members, this lot are the cool young brother who wears his baseball cap the wrong way round. That said, the stuff here is perfectly acceptable, they just cast their net a little wider; there’s even a History section which is clever because it can drag in a lot of archaeology as well.

Live Science: The Most Interesting Articles, Mysteries & Discoveries

News Sites Lots of news outlets employ good science journos and it’s bitterly unfair of us to only pick three. But for historical, personal reasons these are the ones that make our cut every day

Daily Mail. Yes that’s right, the Daily Mail. Before all our enlightened readers start reaching for the benzodiazepemes, we know there may be “issues” around some of their news reporting, and yes they did seem to flirt with certain anti-vaccinators a couple of decades ago. But there is nothing like a sinner repentant we say, and their writings on things like global warming, antibiotics and vaccines are now utterly objective and right-on. All right, some of the “comments” underneath seem to come right out of the Mesolithic, but, hell, they can’t pick their readers anymore than we can.

Latest Science News & Technology News | Daily Mail Online

Guardian The days of gratuitous typos are long over with this lot, and there’s often a wry, Guardianesque take on stories which will keep you in.

Science | The Guardian

El Pais We couldn’t leave you with just English Language hits, could we? To prove we are a truly international blog, we recommend the most serious and best of all the Spanish News outlets. Warning: like just about every other Spanish publication we have ever read, they seemed to have skimped on subeditors. So, often, the sentences start and go on and on and on, like that, one sentence, until it fills a whole paragraph, or two, and still you’re reading it, and……..OK. maybe the money was better spent on tapas. But what about the poor readers?

#sciencejournalism

• 

• 

• 

One thing is certain-lockdowns are a whole lot easier when you can get your food delivered. And the driver’s route is planned by a computer algorithm, not a man with a telephone and a piece of paper. Vaccines help. So will anitbiotics or antivirals when the next one hits. But how were things in the good old days before all those pesky scientists and doctors came along and forced us to have to think about things? Here is a brief survey of some plagues from the past, which we hope helps to lend perspective.

Antonine Plague c AD 165-170, recurring big until c. AD 190 Cause: almost certainly smallpox. Species Jump: Virus probably originated by mutation from rodents and or camels, both common along the trade routes of the time. Cure: pray to the God Apollo, whose temples seemed to have boomed. Mortality: Smallpox can kill 70% of infected persons, but best estimates for this plague are around 30-50% across the Roman Empire. Long term consequences The demographic catastrophe began the decline of the Ancient World.

Plague of Cyprian AD 248-270 Cause: thoroughly unpleasant haemorrhagic fever, perhaps like ebola. Species jump: more pesky rodents. Cure: pray to Jesus Christ Mortality: could be anything up to 50% depending on where you were. Long term consequences: This one has been a bit of a Cinderella in the history books, but according to Professor Harper its economic, political and cultural consequences were extreme. These were the years when Christianity changed from a small cult to a world religion. Damage was so great that the Roman Empire began the process of splitting into two halves.

Plague of Justininian AD 541-550, recurring in nasty waves until c AD 750. Cause: Black Death from bacillus Yersinia pestis. Species jump: From black rat Rattus rattus via fleas. Cure: Pray to any Saint or Deity you could think of. Mortality: Opinion is divided, but a good guess for black death ususally comes out around 40-50% (see below) Long term consequences: Justinian’s Eastern Empire was almost on the point of getting back the West when this plague blew their chances for good. Recrudescences of this plague sapped the Byzantines’ economy and army so much that they were reduced to a tiny fragment, and Islam occupied most of the lost provinces.

Black Death AD 1347-1355.,although it never really went away, and is still endemic in many countries. Cause, Mortality, Species jump, Cure: see Justinian above. Long term consequences: The jury is still out. In some countries wages rose, as there was hardly anyone left to work. Some see it leading to a new crisis of faith which in turn led to developments like the Renaissance and Reformation.

Spanish Flu AD 1918-1920 Cause: virus in the flu family Orthomyxoviridae. Proteins on the outside, RNA inside-sounds familiar? Species jump: the orthomyxoviridae are endemic in pigs and poultry, hence the repeated epidemics of flu we got every year. Mortality: varied by country, but estimates for the peak years suggest a minimum of 17 million and a possible maximum as high as 100 million world wide. Cure: aspirin, arsenic, strychnine and epsom salts. It is unlikely any worked much. Due to prevalence of mask wearing, a lively anti-mask movement soon sprang up, especially in San Francisco.

There have been other pandemics, so we apologise to all those Greeks, Goths Assyrians and others who have missed a mention. There will be more to come; so a donation to a medical research charity or sending your child off to become a medical researcher might be a very good investment.

Kyle Harper The Fate of Rome Princeton University Press 2017

#pandemic #epidemic #plague #romanempire #middleages #bacteria #virus #firstworld war #rats

• 

• 

• 

Remember back in 2006, when the Bush administration was trying to extricate itself from its truly catastrophic decision to invade Iraq? Ideas of a world triumph for Liberal Democracy were coming apart, and all the talk of the smart set was Samuel Huntingon and clashes of civilisations. The ideas of Islam, it was said, clashed with those of the west, and here would be the showdown. We suppose they forgot to tell Russia and China, who were already nurturing ideas of their own.

It was then that a man called David Ronfeldt publised a truly perceptive essay on the problem of tribalism, which we link below* (confession- we only stumbled upon it yesterday). Slowly the knowledge dawned on the Bush people that their problems in Iraq were due to tribalism, not clashes of belief. And gradually the realisation grew on everyone else. We at LSS have often advertised how the theme was developed by authors like Amy Chua and Eric Kaufman. (LSS ad nauseam) But there, back in ’06 was Ronfeldt, the daddy of them all. Since when Tribalism has grown across the world like a cancer. Its symptoms are obvious. Short easy answers to every question-blame the outsiders. Ranting charlatans leading disatrous responses to pandemics and other problems which call for co-operative, global solutions. The threats of armed conflict where before there was just peaceful trade. And lots of different competing tax havens for the worlds’ billionaires.

The task for all intelligent people is to think of a way out of this mindset before it destroys us all. It will not be easy. But unless we try, it won’t be done at all

Today’s Wars Are Less About Ideas Than Extreme Tribalism | RAND

#tribalism #ideology #iraq #bushadministration #balkans

• 

• 

• 

Today, March 8th is International Womens Day, and for anyone in the Enlightenment Community, it should be as important as any day of the year. The battle of women against ignorance and brutality is everyone’s battle. Today we have three stories to salute brave women in three very different ways.

Birth of the Refuge For some 1973 was a sunny, optimistic time, last of the post war years before the winter crisis changed the world for ever. But the smiling face of consumer society hid dark, savage truths. Nowhere was this more so than the experience of thousands of women who were condemned to a life of physical and psychological violence-and there was no help. Until the birth of the womens refuge movment. In May 1973 Jenny Smith became one of the first to seek help. Read her moving story here, told by Sandra Laville in the Guardian

Domestic violence: how the world’s first women’s refuge saved my life | Women | The Guardian

Educating women makes us all richer Do you sincerely want to be rich? Then do all you can to help the education of women. Alright we’ve said it here before, and we’ll keep on saying it until you lot listen. We’ve linked to a Wikipedia article below. Dear old Wiki- it’s incredibly earnest and straight, stuffed with case studies and links to links. But it proves our case handsomely,if you want to click on. But why not, just for once, take our word for it? It’ll save you so much time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_impact_of_female_education#:~:text=Women%27s%20education%

Digging up the dirt with Mary Anning In the early nineteenth century nearly all scientists were men. And there were few enough of them! But on England’s Dorset coast there lived a woman who would change the face of Paleontology forever-Mary Anning. Fossil hunter, collector, tireless seeker after knowledge she opened up the famous Jurassic Coastline of Dorset and gave the world its first glimpse of Icthyosaurs, pliosaurs, mosasaurs, belemnites, ammonites and dozens of other saurs and nites that would put paleontology on the map. So overwhelming was her irrefutable evidence of a vast, rich and teeming past, that the work of Darwin and Lyall was half done before those boys put pen to paper. We’ll start you off with Wiki, but searches for Mary Anning will reveal a number of hits, and dozens of those marvellous early Victorian prints and paintings of ancient life. Enjoy

Mary Anning – Wikipedia

talking of Women’s Day and Wikipedia. here’s their link to how YOU can help both, with lots of links, organisations and projects. Remeber the mother that bore you, and join in.

Gender gap/International Women’s Day – Meta (wikimedia.org)

#feminism #internationalwomensday #refuges #paleontology #maryanning #education #femaleemancipation

• 

• 

• 

Welcome to another round up of things that caught our eye. This week, they’re all about the power of reason to make our lives better. What is reason?You start with a hypothesis. You test it with facts, which will either confirm or deny the hypothesis. If facts confirm your hypothesis it becomes true and you move forward to create things like modern medicine, computers, a welfare state, aeroplanes and washing machines. The problem is that for at least ten years more and more people only look for facts which confirm their hypotheses. We had this thinking for thousands of years; it produced only squalor, disease and wars, The following examples show why reason is better than belief:

New hope for the blind It’s early days, but the Mail has a marvellous story about retinal implants which could give blind people the chance to see, and move around more easily. We can’t find a by-line, but its really well written and explained with some fantastic graphics.

Scientists develop retinal implants that could give artificial vision to the blind | Daily Mail Online

Future Proofing- We all know how data centres and servers wolf down energy, especially now that there’s so much cryptocurrency mining going on. Could DNA become a low energy replacement? Heres an intriguing piece from Nature, Tech Firms give DNA data Storage a boost

A small but growing group of researchers advocates for DNA as a sustainable, stable replacement for energy-hungry data centres. These efforts got a lift last November, when a coalition of computing and biotech firms, including Microsoft and Western Digital, announced that they were forming the DNA Data Storage Alliance (DDSA). The low-hanging fruit for DNA data storage is data that are written once and read rarely, if ever. That’s because DNA remains stable for a long time, but data access — through sequencing and data analysis — is slow.Nature | 4 min read

Why we’re not like them Readers of LSS will have long ago realised that the tribal instict is one of the most powerful and destructive forces we know. Here’s a nice piece from the Conversation which shows that only a world wide response to Covid-19 will work and anything else will fail.

https://images.theconversation.com/files/387031/original/file-20210301-16-ye6mbh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=

Unfortunately, the sort of people who say “I’ve made up my mind-don’t confuse me with the facts!” are free to wallow in their self-pleasuring illusions for a while. In the long run, they drag their societies down with them. If that happens to free western societies, there is no shortage of competitors waiting to take our place.

#blind #retinalimplants #sight #datastorage #dna #covid-19 #vaccines #sars-cov-2

It’s Spring! You know, spring- daffodils in bloom, skies getting lighter, leaves, birds, all that stuff. Oh, so you want to go all intellectual? Have you got a first class honours degree Jack,or what? Alright…the return of new life and hope in Spring has been deeply embedded in the human psyche, at least since the Neolithic, blah blah blah. Yes,we too ploughed through The Golden Bough in a long-ago youth. Its eclectic synthesis of religion, magic, anthropology and history still make it landmark of profound erudition. So what better way to be true to its spirit than our offer of sixteen fresh fruity spring cocktails! Count ’em,sixteen,cocktail pickers!

Let’s start with the Elderflower, and its derivative liquer, St Germain. We owe our first fifteen to a delightful website called The Spruce Eats. If you click below you will find a) and explanation of St Germain b) the promised fifteen c) that the website is a lot shorter and easier to read than The Golden Bough d) there’s more pictures. Here’s their take on No.1, the basic elderflower cocktail

The iconic elderflower cocktail is a brilliant way to start your elderflower journey. It’s delicate, sparkling, and elegant. Plus, the recipe requires just three ingredients: St. Germain, Champagne or white wine, and club soda. Incredibly simple, it’s a signature cocktail of the liqueur and one you’ll want to share with everyone you know

15 Delightful St. Germain Elderflower Cocktail Recipes (thespruceeats.com)

For those who arre allergic to elderflower (what?- you must be joking!-ed) we offer another springlike special, the Daedalus

Put five seedless white grapes in a shaker with a good supply of ice, and add a few basil leaves.Next add one measure of London Dry Gin, 1/2 measure of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of sugar syrup. Now shake violently-this should open up the grapes. Pour through a strainer into a big wine glass and add more ice cubes. Now top up with a fine white burgundy or one of the better products of the Bordeaux region. Et Robert c’est son oncle as they say in France.

JG Frazer The Golden Bough Macmillan 1950

#elderflower #stgermain #thespruceeats #culturalanthropology #cocktails #fridaynight

• 

• 

• 

Almost one hundred years ago the great economist JM Keynes predicted that within a few years, the working week could be cut to 15 hours, as all the basic needs of mankind would have been met. It was the 1930s equivalent of the current discussion on the introduction of a Universal Basic Income, a recent proposal for the milllions who will be thrown out of work by the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

The basic idea has been floating around for centuries, and discussed by thinkers as diverse as Thomas Paine and Noah Harari. Superficially, it’s attractive because it addresses an obvious problem. It is daring, counter-intuitive, and humane. Its logic is beguiling: the state protects us all from enemies via the armed forces and police-so why not from hunger and cold?

Yet once again, that old Devil whispers in our ear. “Yes”, he says; “AI has cost a lot of people their jobs-but isn’t that an argument for finding them different jobs?” To be fair, work has its own benefits for the human soul. There’s nothing like the disciplines of the work place for knocking the bad bits off of lazy, rebellious teenagers and proving that they’re not the centre of the universe. Finally-will all the millions still in work, and the owners of capital, actually be willing to pay for vast numbers of idlers to laze the day away in the park?

Wiser heads than our own have counselled looking at the various pilot schemes and trials which have been tried before rushing to judgement. In our time, we have seen many a brave scheme go down to failure. Extreme caution on this one, we think.

Universal basic income – Wikipedia

Economics: Whatever happened to Keynes’ 15-hour working week? | Economics | The Guardian

Yuval Noah Harari 21 Lessons for the Twenty First Century Jonathan Cape 2018

#universalbasicincome #johnmaynardkeynes #thomaspaine #economics #artificialintelligence #automation

• 

• 

• 

The first rule of knowledge is to ask the right questions. We’ll tell you the second later. Today, that most admirable Journal Nature gets close to asking exactly the right, sensible questions about where this whole sorry Covid mess came from:

Following a month-long fact-finding mission in China, a World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic concluded that the virus probably originated in bats and passed to people through an intermediate animal. But fundamental questions remain about when, where and how SARS-CoV-2 first infected people.
Nature speaks to four of the WHO investigators about five questions they still want answered.Nature | 7 min read

We’re not going to steal their thunder, perish the thought, but here are the five questions

Was the virus circulating in Wuhan before the outbreak was declared ? The internet is chock full of people with opinions on this, often with agendas of their own. Here you will find some cool headed analysis-and the findings may surprise you

Was the virus circulating outside China before that fateful December 2019? We’ve touched on this before at LSS-and it looks as if some pretty thorough follow-ups are taking place at last.

Was it the infamous Wuhan meat market? Maybe everyone zoomed in too fast on this back last year. After all, where do markets get their supplies from?

What about frozen meat? Maybe it didn’t come in from local fresh sources, but from much further away!

Was it wild animals? Ah this one’s almost nostalgic now-remember all those bats and pangolins? So what other viruses are out there -and how often do they jump the species barrier?

Oh yeah -the second rule of knowledge. We almost forgot, sorry. Never listen to anyone who knows the answers, especially when they have no training in the field they are sounding off about. The ones who don’t know are usually right-and they keep asking questions. Wanting cognitive closure is a sure sign of being an idiot.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00502-4?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=0e95e46bd1-b

#Sars-Cov-2 #covid-19 #coronavirus #bats #pangolins #wuhan #China #meatmarket #pandemic #zoonoses

• 

• 

• 

When first confronted with overwhelming evidence for climate change the primary tactic for carbon polluters was to deny it. Working through a network of journalists, politicians and lobby groups, they muddied the waters, confused the science and sowed doubt enough to continue reaping profits. Slowly the weight of evidence has made this tactic increasingly untenable. So another trope has been to asseverate that renewable energy was always going to be too expensive and that practical men-notice the noun-would always rely on fossil fuels, because they knew so much more than the rest of us – women, students, greens and other less flattering epithets- about how the world worked, etc.

They were false prophets. Because now the overwhelming evidence is that the cost of renewable energy-solar, wind, tides and so on is plummeting. Below we have three excellent websites which will take the wind out of the polluters’ sails-with lots of sparkling pictures and clever graphics. But allow us to cherry pick a few plum facts. Between 2010 and 2019 the cost of concentrated solar energy fell by 47%; for PV solar it was a stunning 82%. Wind energy costs are down by between 29-39%. And remember-we haven’t started to talk about the improvements in batteries to store all this. Hope indeed.

For over a century, carbon polluters have dominated out planet, our politics and our psychology. Their power was based on big money. But investment follows profits, and both are moving out of fossils and towards the future. Expect continued fights from the carbon polluters and their accolytes.But no one knows better than them that the writing is on the wall.

Renewables ‘increasingly cheaper’ than fossil fuels – reNews – Renewable Energy News

Renewables cheaper than fossil fuel plants by 2030 – pv magazine International (pv-magazine.com)

Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? And what can we do to use this global opportunity for green growth? – Our World in Data

#climatechange #globalwarming #fossilfuels #pollution #solarenergy #windenergy #tidalenergy #nuclearenergy #renewables #2030

The bear is back– it looks as if investors and borrowers may be in for a rough time during the next few months. The long bull market may about to be replaced by a mean old bear, which has been lurking in the corner ever since inflation worries emerged. How long is it going to last? Here’s a nifty little piece from Julia Kollewe and Graeme Wearden in the Guardian.

Global stock markets drop as inflation fears prompt sell-off | Stock markets | The Guardian

You can be an Oxford University Scientist by Monday-staying on the theme of bears, how would you like to be a scientist doing original research for Oxford University, starting next week-and, get this, from the comfort of your own home? Apple News report that Oxford want the public to help them analyse ten years’ worth of photos for behavioural studies. We say; the more data we get, the more chance there is of saving these amazing creatures from extinction.To quote the words of La Belle in their popular song Lady Marmalade “hey Joe- wanna give it a go?”

_{We thank Mr and Mrs L Charlton of Kent for this lead}

Oxford University are looking for armchair citizen scientists for a polar bear research project (inews.co.uk)

Tigers-Two steps forward, one back: Humanity can be proud of the stupendous efforts made to conserve the graceful Tiger. India has had particular success. But now its parks and reservations face the same problem that zoos and sancturies have known for decades-inbreeding among tiny populations. Looks like one we’ll have to tackle in the forthcoming decades. Both ESSO and Kellogs do well from tiger branding- how about passing them the old hat? Here’s The Hindu, via Nature Briefings.

Tigers (Panthera tigris) in India could lose their rich genetic diversity as their habitats shrink in size, according to an analysis of the complete genome sequences of 65 tigers. Hemmed into increasingly fragmented protected areas, the tigers might mate only with those in their own population, including their relatives. The analysis found that several individual tigers had low genetic variation, suggesting that inbreeding has already occurred. Some 70% of the world’s tigers live in India.The Hindu | 9 min read
Further reading: India’s tigers seem to be a massive success story — many scientists aren’t sure (Nature | 15 min read, from 2019)
Reference: Molecular Biology and Evolution paper

Finally….how much is a bottle of wine? It could be up to $2.07 million dollars, if you like champagne, although more reasonable prices start around $21 000-$34 000 a bottle. We were amazed when we read this article on the Finance online website. It’s not a question of the rights and wrongs of spending that money. It’s simply a question of why bother?

Top 10 Most Expensive Champagne Bottles In The World In 2021 – Financesonline.com

That’s it for the week. We counsel you all that if you are going to enjoy a tipple with your Saturday Night Supper, you indulge in something that is priced a little more moderately.

#stockmarket #bearmarket #bullmarket #inflation #polarbears #climatechange #tiger #conservation #champagne