Weekly Round Up: Eternal Life, China takes over, Russian Problems and a dialogue of the deaf. What a lot to think about!

We couldn’t help noticing these thought provoking tropes!

The Brain that Lived for Ever According to The Guardian, eternal life may be just around the corner. Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnson is hoping to extract our brains and preserve them, in order that future generations will revive them and help us to live forever. Assuming that is, that they can bothered-who needs a clapped-out 21st century brain when you have quantum computing wired into your own? Perhaps John Agar and the Brain from Planet Arous were on to something after all. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/01/with-brain-preservation-nobody-has-to-die-meet-the-neuroscientist-who-believes-life-could-be-eternal

If America Stumbles, will China take over? If America really does pull out of the Climate change agreements, any claim to moral leadership and soft power will have been vitiated. Forever. It will give the Peoples Republic of China the right to step up to the plate and lead the world to safety. Who can blame the rest of us if we follow? Here’s Justin Rowlatt for the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rx2drd8x8o

Russia’s best week turns sour Election of Donald Trump, more advances on the battlefield, free nations losing heart: what’s not to like for Russia’s Vladimir Putin? Except that his Syrian outpost is cracking and his economy is slowly going down the tubes, as this article from The Conversation makes clear. Like Britain in the 1940s he has sold out hope of future growth for the sake of victory here and now. In effect, his empire is really just a satellite of China. But maybe that’s a good thing for the rest of us-see above . https://theconversation.com/russian-rouble-collapse-exposes-deep-problems-in-the-countrys-economy-244869?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversati

Why don’t they listen to scientists? A running theme of this blog is that the world never seems to notice the work and methods of science(except when it needs vaccines in a hurry) There’s no easy answer, if the popular mind deals in emotion and stories, and the scientific one in reason and evidence. Nature Briefings offers this thoughtful discourse Why we’re not solving more with Science

A Nature global survey finds that most specialists are unhappy with systems that provide science advice to policymakers. Eighty per cent said their country’s science-advice system was either poor or patchy, and 70% said that governments are not routinely using such advice. Nature’s survey — which took place before the US election in November — together with more than 20 interviews, reveals where some of the biggest obstacles to science advice lie. Eighty per cent of respondents thought policymakers lack sufficient understanding of science — but 73% said that researchers don’t understand how policy works. “It’s a constant tension between the scientifically illiterate and the politically clueless,” says policy specialist Paul Dufour.Nature | 15 min read

Well that’s it for this week. We don’t profess any religion here, but we are fans of 17th century English, brought up on the resonances of Shakespeare and Milton and the King James Bible. Which is why we have chosen this cadent little homily from their version of Proverbs 12 3 to send you away

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding/ for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold/she is more precious than rubies and the the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her

(it applies to women, too)

#china #america #climate change #neurology #the brain from planet arous #russia #vladimir putin #reason #emotion #evidence

A whole herd of hominins. But how different are they really?

Fans of human evolution have more to contend with than the followers of any football team. For every one of the competitions they’re in ( Champions League, La Liga, Copa del Rey, whatever) We have six new skulls and four new DNA analyses every week. Or so it seems, and just about every one leads to a new species. Or so that seems too..

Proof of this comes from two new articles we have for you today. William Hunter of The Daily Mail (despite all their other deficiencies, a great Science Desk) waxes lyrical on recent discoveries in China [1] which suggests a fourth late-to modern population of hominins who lived alongside Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans about 100 000 years ago. But how different were they-and how different were the other three? Our thoughts on that one below. Meanwhile Nature Briefings offers us this, An Ancient Encounter Frozen in Time

Some 1.5 million years ago, two ancient hominin species crossed paths on a lake shore in Kenya. Their footprints in the mud were frozen in time and lay undiscovered until 2021. Now, analysis of the impressions reveals that they belonged to Homo erectus, a forebear of modern humans, and the more distant relative Paranthropus boisei. The two individuals walked through the lake area within hours or days of each other — leaving the first direct record of different archaic hominin species coexisting in the same place.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Science paper

No one would take away from the dedication and professional work of the team who made this discovery. It’s just that, with so many different hominin species hurrying about, and so few with mobile phones with which to record each other, can we really be sure who planted their feet in that long ago bed of sand?

Which leads us to recall the case of the Red Deer Cave people. Who, until recently, were a bit of a mystery in the human story. They looked very archaic and odd. But they dated very recently (maybe about 14000 years BCE) They were in the right place at the right time, Could they, might they, be real Denisovans, maybe, huh? To which recent DNA analysis gave the resounding answer: no, they were fully and completely 100% human. If they were alive today you’d have to give them a vote, a credit card and a driving licence. They couldn’t be worse than some other users of the road. All of which leads us to the following conclusions

1 Keep digging in China (look what they did for dinosaur research)

2 Let’s stand one step back from all claims and remember what happened to some of them in the past

3 What if the whole business of species labelling is missing the point, and there’s really only been one human line for three million years, with startling local changes in gene frequencies due to ecological pressures and tiny population sizes?

Only we can say that, because we don’t belong to any institution. Occasionally, that’s a freedom worth having.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14152203/big-head-people-lost-species.html

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

#human evolution #paleoanthropology #dna #hominin #china #africa #paranthropus

The Stupidest Idea we ever had-and how we dismissed it

Here’s a killer quote, if ever there was one:

_{when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins”. The right was much more skilled on this terrain, weaving compelling human stories while its opponents tended to take refuge “in reciting their best facts and figures, as if they were trying to prevail in a high school debate tournament”.}

It’s from an article by John Harris for the Guardian, [1] quoting the work of Drew Westen, a sagacious political philosopher whose work The Political Brain explains more than most about why progressives keep losing. ( Declaration of interest: Harris is on our list of all time top journalists because he actually goes out and talks to real people)

From which we deduced that the answer to all the world’s problems must be to create a Political party to obtain representation for The Intelligent and Educated. You know, the way working people in the UK set up the Labour Party in the nineteenth century, because they felt that the Liberals and Conservatives did not represent their interests? Spotted the flaw yet? We went on to point out to ourselves that we did all the science and doctoring and lawyering and wrote all the movies and……still not spotted the the flaw? And no, we had not been drinking, we’re on a diet at the moment; but we do not need to drink heavily to make huge blunders. We’re amazingly good at it, even when when sober . Last chance: have you spotted our fault?

OK here’s the answer. This morning we had coffee with a wonderful elderly neighbour who spent most of his life as a fisherman on the Sussex coast. In the course of a long, pleasant conversation we learned much of the Perils of the Sea. Storms, wrecks, unpleasant colleagues, conger eels, that sort of thing. For example, what do you do when you haul up a 1000 lb German torpedo and get it tangled in your nets in a strong wind and a heavy sea in the shipping lanes, and it is threatening to explode/capsize your boat/ slow you into the path of a 200 000 tonne supertanker? The answer is to think. Very quickly, very profoundly and very thoroughly, in a way that landlubber University Professors and keyboard wannabees never, ever have to.

And suddenly it crossed our minds. Who’s intelligent now? What price all your books and theories when you have to face existential crises like that one? And still have to calculate the economics of the fishing business-pay for fuel, pay the crew, keep alive, sell the fish, etc? And another lesson became even clearer. Until we in the Centre, on the Left, Liberals, Whigs, Progressives, Greens or whatever we want to call ourselves take very seriously-very seriously indeed- the feelings, emotions and opinions of those who actually do the work, we will be lost at sea indeed.

[1]tps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/01/labour-relaunch-government-nigel-farage-donald-trump?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

[2] Drew Westen The Political Brain Business News Publishing 2007

#john harris #inshore fishing #politics #government #progressive #conservatives

Did your long-ago BCG Vaccine save you from Dementia?

Ask elderly readers of this blog about their BCG vaccine and they will recall an age of 45rpm records, Ben Sherman shirts and George Harrison‘s Concert for Bangladesh. But they still bear tiny marks, high on their left arms from they day they lined up outside the school dispensary. Ostensibly, the vaccination was against TB. But it may have been doing something else which concerns them very much here and now. It may actually have been protecting them against dementia. Get this from an excellent article by Amy Fleming of The Guardian:

…...BCG vaccine was originally used against tuberculosis, but it is also often part of a treatment programme for bladder cancer. “It stimulates the immune system,” says Lathe. A team of researchers in Jerusalem, he says, decided to look at patients who survived bladder cancer and compare dementia prevalence among patients treated with BCG and those who weren’t. “Do they differ in the rate at which they get Alzheimer’s disease?” The answer is yes – the BCG group appeared to get 75% protection against Alzheimer’s. A number of studies have now found varying levels of protection from BCG, with an average, according to one meta‑analysis, of 45%. [1]

And that is only the tip pf the iceberg, gentle readers. For what Amy’s article is really all about is a set of discoveries that the brain’s privileged position as a microbe-free zone is now under serious challenge. It was a position suspected by no less a scientist than the great Alzheimer himself. But was then rather complacently dismissed for many following years. It’s a theme which we’ve alluded to here before (LSS 14 9 24) following leads by the excellent team at the New Scientist. If so, we could at least be on the verge of real cures for all kinds of mental disturbances. And when we think of the terrible suffering such illnesses inflict both on the immediate victim, and their families and carers, we see that as a step forward indeed.

The patient careful thought of researchers and scientists offers the only real hope of ameliorating the human condition. How sad to live in an age when it is eclipsed by the passionate emotion of savage, ignorant mobs. That’s a theme we shall return to, as well.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/01/the-brain-microbiome-could-understanding-it-help-prevent-dementia?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#bcg #vaccines #dementia #alzheimer #immune system #brain #microbiology ]#new scientist

New Report : Net Zero is good for your health

“Smoking causes cancer.” Remember the stages of denial and obfuscation we faced in that battle? It seems long-ago and quaint now, like Planning Objections to Hadrian’s Wall. Stage 1 Refusal to listen at all. Stage 2: try to trash the evidence: Very few smokers we knew had any qualifications in science or medicine, but they seemed to know a lot about those subjects, suddenly. Stage 3:Towards the end came an angry insistence on individual freedom, as if their liberty included the right to kill the rest of us by breathing out vast clouds of noxious poisons in pubs. There may be some uncomfortable contemporary parallels.

The forces of ignorance have not gone away. Instead they have lighted on objections to all things that might advance the slow progress towards Net Zero, a fairly anodyne policy which will do for our lungs much the same job as banning smoking did. We need hardly remind readers as intelligent as ours of the links between particulates , Nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, ozone and all the other horrible things that cars push out, and the list of cardiac, pulmonary and neurological ailments that these entail. Because this report from the WHO will do it for you. [1] How ironic if a policy like Net Zero, conceived as a global answer to problems like rising sea levels, titanic storms and mass migration, could also end up as a remedy for public health. Yet it might, according to this article by Gary Fuller of the Guardian [2] Get this quote:

…….. policies for US net zero by 2050 could result in rapid health gains. By 2035, early deaths from air pollution could be reduced by between 4,000 and 15,000 a year, with even greater benefits thereafter……The $65bn to $128bn financial gains from fewer people dying early from air pollution exposure are at least as big as the financial benefits from avoiding direct damage from a changed climate.

Remember this the next time you hear someone inveighing against efforts to cut fossil fuel emissions: they are directly harming your children, as well as their own.

[1]https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/how-air-pollution-is-destroying-our-health

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/29/climate-policies-reduce-air-pollution-saving-lives-money

#net zero #pollution #transport #public health #cardiac disease #pulmonary disease #life expectancy

A quick round up: Plastic Pollution just got worse, Computers just got faster…and who were the Denisovans?

a few stories that caught our eye

Plastic pollution just got worse Remember those old movies where hard-pressed producers stared combining other movies? Think Godzilla and King Kong or Jesse James and Frankenstein’s daughter. The results were nearly always worse than the original. Well, it’s the same in the ocean PFAs do quite a bit of damage, So do microplastics, all things considered. But when you consider the two together, as Tom Perkins does in this Guardian article, you are in for a whole lot more trouble.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/25/pfas-microplastics-toxic

Quantum Computers just got faster Just when someone comes up with the-best-thing-ever-yet, someone else supersedes it. Remember CRISPR-Cas-9 and Base pair editing? Well now it looks as if AI may be going the same way. Read this:Giant Quantum Computers built from Light, in Nature Briefings

By the end of 2027, researchers at the private quantum-computing firm PsiQuantum aim to be using light in silicon chips to build a giant, programmable quantum computer. That ambitious goal is far ahead of major rivals such as Google and IBM. PsiQuantum researchers say they hope to also show that such a computer can run commercially useful programmes. The company has raised US$1 billion but has shown relatively little compared to its competitors, leaving some scientists worried it’s promising more than it can deliver.Nature | 13 min read

Who were the Denisovans anyway? One of the most intriguing puzzles in paleontology is the nature of the Denisovans, that mysterious third cousin of the modern human family. Since their discovery through the truly remarkable achievements of Professor Paabo and his teams, their details remain sketchy. A few scraps of bone, some DNA, and a few artefacts. So-hats off Linda Ongaro of The Conversation who pulls together what is known now, in November 2024. We are sure that she shares our wish that one day this excellent article will have been superseded.

https://theconversation.com/their-dna-survives-in-diverse-populations-across-the-world-but-who-were-the-denisovans-244441?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%

#dna #pollution #microplastics #PFA #denisovan #quantum computer

Tariffs: Like it or not, Trump has captured the spirit of our times

President Trump Postlaunch Remarks (NHQ202005300037) by NASA HQ PHOTO is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

“Tear down your wall!” This was the gauntlet which US President Ronald Reagan threw down to the Communist bloc in the 1980s. It was a harbinger of times to come. Reagan was the leader of the Neoliberal programme, by which he meant that trade: the free flow of goods, services, capital and people would bring undreamed-of levels of prosperity and confine the memory of the restricted economies of Socialism to the dusty bookshelves of the History Faculty. Remember the 1990s and all those endless negotiations on GATT and the World Trade Organisation, as the good times rolled? The world was to follow the principle of Comparative Advantage, as advocated by David Ricardo, with each nation specialising in what it did best.

Yet the Neoliberal model contained the seeds of its own downfall, as we have noted before on these pages. The profound existential crisis it endured after 2008 has never ended. And now everyone, both ruled and rulers, has learned to turn away from its nostrums and the many problems which unrestricted movement has brought

Chief among these of course is immigration, which has incited a visceral fear of identity crisis among the native populations of countries where it runs high. Immigration was never a socialist thing, but a capitalist one. Donald Trump has recognised this, by using trade tariffs explicitly to control immigration(and the supply of stupefying drugs, (which similarly obeys the rules of a free market) As this Guardian article notes, he is simply the most powerful exponent of the spirit of our times. Free markets are out. Red Tape is in. What could be more Red Tape than immigration control? [1]

Of course everyone will follow suit. The first will be nations and trading blocs, retaliating against their American tormentor. Perhaps everyone will be poorer, but they may well live in more stable societies. However, once you throw over the market principle and prize stability above prosperity, you open the door to other innovations. Like higher taxes, which are also advocated to promote social good.. To restrictions on the buying and selling of second homes, lest they damage the fabric of local communities. To ever tighter restrictions on the use of cars, cigarettes and alcohol. Access to the internet and other sources of information. Trump and his supporters may not yest realise it fully, but they have already sold the pass.

[1]://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/26/the-guardian-view-on-donald-trump-tariffs-protectionism-is-no-longer-taboo-in-politics

#WTO #socialism #donald trump #immigration #ricardo #regulations #autarky

Lascivious Album Covers: But could you spare 1% for Brian Eno?

Photo by SK Movies & Photos on Pexels.com

Ancient readers of this blog, rummaging through the rubble of their memories, will recall the existence of a group of musicians called Roxy Music from the very early 1970s. It was not the lasciviousness of their album covers, nor the egregious prose of some of their supporters (or so it seemed to us) It was rather the way that ordinary rock and roll was combined with art college ambitiousness, blending allusive vocals, timely guitar licks and soaring synthesisers. The man responsible for the later was Brian Eno . After whose departure Roxy Music dwindled in to a good, but no longer very noteworthy, dance band, at least in the opinion of many early followers.[1]

But Eno soared into what can truly be described as an illustrious career. His list of collaborators reads like a list of some of the most percipient people of the last 50 years, including (hold your breath) David Bowie, Ultravox, Damien Albarn,U2, David Byrne, Grace Jones (that’s enough citations-ed) At 75, he is still one of the most sought-after producers and even such luminaries as Philip Glass cite him as an influence.

Yet Eno is nothing if not aware of the broader social and economic trends of our time. Also ecological ones, like global warming, which will kill most of us very soon if action to avert it is not taken shortly. To this end he and some colleagues have founded Earth Per Cent [2] whose founding aim was

Through the generous backing of our Founding Donors—remarkable artists and organizations committed to environmental advocacy—we’re able to channel the power of music into meaningful environmental change

Which in effect means all kind of restorative projects in all parts of the world.

Many of you who listened to early Roxy Music on a stereo in those far off days in someone’s mum’s front room will have grandchildren now. At the present rate of things, those grandchildren are unlikely to boast of the same. Can you do something to help Brian Eno?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno

[2]https://www.earthpercent.org/

#roxy music #brian eno #global warming #earth percent #climate change #renewables

Avian Flu: A pandemic to make COVID look innocuous, may be about to happen

Imagine the COVID pandemic all over again. Hospitals full of dying people. Their overworked staff burnt out to the point of exhaustion. The masked survivors walking though haunted empry streets. The economies of the world in freefall. Only try to imagine that the pathogen is ten times more lethal than the COVID-19 virus. And you begin to get some idea of what the H₅N₁ virus will do.

So far the virus has been confined to birds Large scale factory farming of poultry is a sur- fire incubator of pandemic organisms. But, if you think you and your family are safe, read this from Nature Briefings Teenage Bird Flu rings alarm Bells

A teenager in Canada is in critical condition after being infected with a version of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has researchers on high alert. Viral genome sequences suggest that this is a mutated form of H5N1 — which is related to the one infecting US dairy cattle but might be better at infecting the human airway. If true, it could mean that the virus can rapidly evolve to make the jump from birds to humans. “There is reason to be concerned,” says immunologist Scott Hensley. “But not reason to totally freak out.”Nature | 6 min read [1]

Obviously scientists and doctors will try to calm us down, it’s part of their job. But one chilling, ineluctable fact screams out from between the lines of these reports. The virus has jumped the barrier between species, Now only one last stage remains: to find a way to perfect human to human transmission. Every disease-ebola fever, smallpox, Bubonic plague, whatever- must pass these two tests. If it does so, it can kill at leisure-in enormous numbers. Remember the Spanish influenza panic of 1918? That was a similar virus(H₁N₁) and it carried off at least 50 million people from a world population of 1.8 billion. If we scale up to today’s population, the deaths will easily top 227 million. And that’s before we take into account the much faster communication and transport systems we now have, which will spread the virus so much more quickly.

So, while you are busy wondering the on line shopping malls, wondering whether Blagdon United will beat Nowhere City or trying to find a group of different people to hate, your nemesis may already be waiting in the wings. Question: does it serve you right?

[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03805-4?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=f0d788c2d2-nature-briefing-daily-20241122&utm_medium=emai

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

#avian flu #pandemic #disease #health #medicine

Plastic Progress brings a particle of comfort

The dreary rounds of negotiation to the endless proliferation of waste plastics go on and on. Steve Fletcher of The Conversation [1] reports from Busan ,South Korea on the fifth and latest (count ’em, folks, five!) stage in the UN Environment Assembly, designed to come up with a treaty to end this stuff. One that is more than a scrap of paper, that is. Because last year alone we dumped more than 400 million fresh tonnes into our life support systems – our fields, seas and atmosphere. Now, at the price of a modest cough, we have been adverting the dangers of all these plastics for years (LSS passim). Most recently we cited their risks as endocrine disruptors, and to the effectiveness of our last remaining antibiotics. There are plenty more reasons to be gloomy, we just haven’t got space to list them.

But there is a tiny ray of hope. It comes from Japan, and it tries to address the problem of all the plastic waste fouling up the seas. A team led by Aida Takuzo has come up with a new class of material which they call supramolecular plastic. It’s clear, it’s strong, it behaves a bit like polypropylene: but get this. It breaks down in seawater. An ecologists dream you might say, but even more so for those of us who live by the sea and whose daily walk consists in negotiating endless mounds of bottles, lids, bags, packets, vapes ,ropes, nets and fender buoys. Which are not only an ecological hazard but an acute source of aesthetic shame.

If you want progress, expect it from the educated and the scientific, toiling ingeniously in their laboratories. Certain nations seem about to forget that simple truth.

[1]https://theconversation.com/time-is-running-out-for-a-treaty-to-end-plastic-pollution-heres-why-it-matters-242165?utm_

[2]https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20241122_11/#:~:text=An%20international%20team%20led%20by%20a%20Japanese%20

biodegradables #plastic #United Nations #pollution #ecology