At LSS we’ve always been a bit worried about rising levels of antibiotic resistance among infectious microorganisms. We think it could kill rather a lot of people. We’re also worried about rising levels of air pollution, particularly the deadly PM2.5 particles from engines, coal and burning forests. We think that could kill rather a lot of people too.

So what de we do when someone brings the two together? Have a nervous
breakdown? Take the entire staff of LSS over to the Porter and
Sorter and East Croydon Station for a massive drink up? We need to
decide quickly, because someone has done the unexpected. The improbable. They
have found a strong link between PM2.5 particles and the rise of antibiotic
resistance.

To show our utter impartiality, we’ve got two press links: one from the Guardian[1]
and one from the Mail [2] Both say the same thing. An international
team has used some really robust data (2000-2018; 118 countries) to show some
sort of link between rising levels of pollutant particulates and rising levels
of antibiotic resistance. They also have the admirable humility to admit that
they don’t know how or why yet. But we strongly suspect they have opened the
door on a vast new area of research in public health.

From which we draw a number of conclusions, none of them all that nice:

1 Things generally are worse than we thought

2 My freedom to drive my white van through your neighbourhood deeply
conflicts with your freedom to live (Sun readers please note)

3 What else is further driving antibiotic resistance? Smoking? Ultra
processed foods? Suddenly it’s wide open.

4 Should the UK Government sack Michael “we’ve had
enough of experts” Gove and spend the money on research
into this matter?

We await your responses with interest.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/07/air-pollution-linked-rise-antibiotic-resistance-imperils-human-health

[2]
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12383945/Air-pollution-linked-rise-antibiotic-resistance-poses-significant-threat-human-health-world-study-claims.ht

[3] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00135-3/fulltext

#pollution #lung disease #asthma #antibitic resistance #diesel #pm2.5
#public health

 

When we were young, the nether end of Charing Cross Road and the little courts and alleys off it always held a certain type of bookshop. Smells of joss-sticks, batik and tie dyed fittings, odd posters of karmic universes ,everywhere. And crowded shelves reflecting the more outre pre-occupations of the human mind-Bigfoot, UFOs, shamans, tantric meditations……and a vast array of books on all kinds of alternative therapies, herbs, lifestyles, cookery and diet plans. Chaotic, disorganised and essentially harmless-a far cry from our real worries of the time, such as Communism and the rise of the National Front. A hippy and a stormtrooper seemed to be a very long way apart. Or are they?

According to James Ball of the Guardian, there’s now a rather well established production line taking new age therapy fans and turning them into fascists [1].Jjames documents a few well known cases, like the hooligans who stormed the US Congress in 2020. But he also delves into the psychological roots of the conspiracists, and tries to answer the question we’re always posing here, Why do they do it? Why do so many people give up the critical faculties of their minds, which after all, is our chief evolutionary adaptation? According to James

Academic researchers of conspiracy theories have speculated about whether their rise in the 20th century is related to the decline of religion. In a strange way, the idea that a malign cabal is running the world – while far more worrying than a benevolent God – is less scary than the idea that no one is in charge and everything is chaos. People who have a reason to mistrust the mainstream pillars of society – government, doctors, the media, teachers – are more likely to turn to conspiracy theories for explanations as to why the world is like it is.

As we speculated yesterday, most people crave certainty. Given the utter chaos of the real world, from the quantum level up, that’s understandable if wrong. For a long time, waht might be termed the rational community, that tiny segment of the population which educates, manages and teaches- were able to reassure them both with our discoveries in science and the cornucopia of bright shiny toys to play with which were such an easy by product of that science. Things like the Iraq war and the crash of 2007-2008 broke much of their trust (who can blame them? to quote WH Auden

All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good. (from Poets.org)

The lights of science and reason are now flickering dangerously low, just as they were in September 1939 Will they soon vanish forever?

we thank Mr Peter Seymour for this story

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/02/everything-youve-been-told-is-a-lie-inside-the-wellness-to-facism-pipeline?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-5

[2]https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939

#alternative medicine #conspiracy #fascist #irrationality

Alongside our other preoccupations, such as cocktails and the shortage of antibiotics, LSS has often covered the touchy issue of identity politics. (LSS 22 10 20 was a typical example, but it wasn’t the only one. We have always felt that identity trumps just about every other concern in the way people vote and think, even at the cost of their own economic well being.

So it’s nice to see our concerns shared and expressed by finer minds. And among such minds, few are finer than that of Simon Kuper, who writes for the Financial Times on an eclectic range of subjects from Association Football to politics. In our link below [1] he returns to the painful subject of Israel and compares its deep identity crisis with that of the United States (astute readers will recall our own essay into this territory (LSS 29 7 23) But Simon does it much better, and really names names, and the terrible dangers that they represent.

The ethno-nationalist thing has always bedevilled progressives from Enlightenment Philosophers all the way out Left to Communists, because it’s not really supposed to exist. We remember Medieval History books in which Swabians hated Saxons, and vice versa. The fact that they are now all Germans meant little at the time. Identities are indeed entirely arbitrary and subjective. But they are intensely real to those who hold them at any one time. And as Simon points out, the lower you go down the social scale, the more fervently these passions are nurtured.

If all nationalities were abolished tomorrow, would people stop hating each other? We think not; probably, you would find the red blood group O people at war the the As, Bs and ABs or the left handers with the right handers or something. Identity and xenophobia are as intrinsic to the human condition as bipedality and colour vision. To acknowledge its existence, and find strategies to cope, offers the possibility of engineering sustainable systems. Because if they fail this time, we are all lost forever.

[1]https://www.ft.com/content/9a8a9bc0-0a81-43e6-b215-bde2611ba6cc

#ethno nationalist #xenophobia #israel #united states #palestinians #enlightenment #simon kuper

You might imagine that the thoughts of an evangelic preacher like John Bunyan (1628-1688)[1] are as far as possible from a rationalist science based blog like this one. Yet the man and his works, including The Pilgrim’s Progress represent the psychological journey of anyone who has to confront the insufficiencies of this world, and knows that to remake it has become an urgent work of survival.

Born in Bedford to a family of tinkers and small traders, Bunyan’s life encompassed that most radical period of the English speaking world at a time when it was the epicentre of human progress and self discovery. The central challenge of Protestantism-the lone confrontation of the Soul with God-meant that anyone from any social class was thereby liberated to play a role in History, but thereby carried the almost insupportable burden to remake the world around them. Bunyan’s early life (Puritan preacher, service in the Parliamentary Army) was with the grain of his times. But the return of the King in the 1660s put radicalism out of fashion, and he spent 12 long years in jail for his beliefs- a sort of Alexy Navalny of his epoch.

Anyone of any faith, or none, who wants to reform the world will have experienced the slow journey from Angry Young Communist through Socialist, Social Democrat, Liberal and Whig, with each each progressive dilution of virtue seen as a Wordly Wise compromise with reality. The Pilgrims Progress is an analysis of the psychological challenges faced by those who refuse to compromise and stay out there, to confront the Devil and his works, in the name of us all.

For a long time, the journey to Moderation seemed the safer bet, for it has given us science, reason and the comfortable amenities, pleasures even, of modern life. Yet the Devil has not gone away. These days his identity is pretty clear, in the shape of the fossil fuel industry and its various outriders and lackeys in the media and politics. The danger they represent is now very real, and the challenge of how to respond is daunting.

There is no point in returning to Evangelical Christianity, most of whose acolytes now seem to lie on the the side of the very rich and white supremacy, at least in the United States. Yet the actions of protestors like Greenpeace who recently(and peacefully) daubed the house of the Prime Minister in oil coloured sheeting seem to have captured something of the spirit of Bunyan and his kind. If our side is to prevail(and our species thereby to survive) maybe we need just a little more of that angry spirit that knows evil when it sees it. And refuses to bend.

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress

#christianity #global warming #john bunyan #radical #moderate

Climate Change is about Science, not Politics We start with a heartfelt plea to try to pull all of us-Conservatives, Centrists, Social Democrats, Leftists, Greens, Train Spotters, whatever-together in the face of what is fast becoming a real planetary emergency. Here’s Adam Ramsay, trying to be as emollient as he can for the Byline Times

‘The Climate Emergency is Too Important to be a Party-Political Battle’

Emotional Intelligence Ignaz Semmelweiss has always been one of he unsung heroes of public health. Yet he demonstrates the clear perils of being absolutely right, but not cutting through. Why? Because he seemed to specialise in rubbing people up the wrong way. Sometime emollience can be worth more than logic! Here’s Nature Briefings-why hand washing took a long time to catch on

Ignaz Semmelweis radically reduced rates of death in childbirth in the middle of the nineteenth century — by introducing hand washing. Yet, at the time, his ideas about infectious agents were rejected by the wider community. A play about Semmelweis now showing in London focuses on why his ideas failed to catch on. Although Dr Semmelweis acknowledges that the medical establishment was at fault for its resistance to change, it seems to place most of the blame on Semmelweis’s character, says reviewer and writer Georgina Ferry. Amid his struggle to save women’s lives, he offended his critics and fell out with even devoted supporters.Nature | 6 min read

Red Admirals Flutter by We’ve always had a soft spot for butterflies whose eye catching flights are synonymous with lazy summer days and things like Pimms, cricket and the smell of new mown hay. But their numbers are fluctuating wildly. The culprit? You guessedit- runaaway clime change. Not bad for the Mail!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12368879/The-Red-Admiral-soars-Migrant-butterfly-commonly-sighted-Britain-numbers-rocket-400-climate

Superconductivity-what is the current situation? There’s no doubt that achieving room temperature superconductivity would enormously cut our energy use. That’s why the whole field is so hotly contested, as this piece from the Conversation makes clear

https://theconversation.com/viral-room-temperature-superconductor-claims-spark-excitement-and-skepticism-210700?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign

well, there’s a raft of ideas for you. Before we go: Eurythmics were one those acts whose first two singles we loved, but never quite seemed to achieve the same special, almost neuralgic level again. Not for us anyway. Maybe you disagree. So to remind you of how good they were at the beginning, here’s Sweet Dreams.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=eurythmics%20sweet%20dreams%20videos&FORM=VIRE0&mid=2AE21FB0549442D293362AE21FB0549442D29336&vi

No, it’s not as good a title as Jesse James meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.* But it does pull together two of a our favourite tropes on this little blogsite: human evolution and antibiotic resistance. We won’t spoil the piece from Nature Briefings which you are about to enjoy, gentle readers. But it’s a marvellous example of using AI to squeeze available resources to the limit, in this case the genomes of our close relatives. “Would you Adam and Eve it?” as they used to say in Old Cockney Rhyming slang.

AI Brings Back Neanderthal Protein Snippets

Artificial intelligence (AI) has helped scientists to resurrect Neanderthal peptides — protein subunits that could be an untapped resource of new antibiotics. An algorithm was trained to recognize sites on human proteins where they are cut into peptides. When the algorithm and other tools were applied to publicly available protein sequences of Neanderthals and Denisovans, it found several peptides that halted the growth of certain bacteria in mice.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Cell Host & Microbe paper

*someone really produced a film with this title

#antibiotics #superbugs #genetics #dna #paleontolgy #evolution

International Day of the Tiger The Zoological Society of London has joined many others in promoting the conservation of this iconic cat. Here’s their link to show it isn’t all doom and gloom Incidentally, overseas visitors to the UK might enjoy a tranquil afternoon in its shady walks and interesting collections; or more so at its larger country subsidiary at Whipsnade.

https://www.zsl.org/news-and-events/feature/tiger-conservation-success-2023?utm_source=zsl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=tiger-success&utm_campaig

Dolphin Tracking Talking of conservation, we’d like to bring in another of our LSS perennials- Artificial Intelligence. Here’s Nature Briefings on a successful new project with great potential for the future

Artificial intelligence (AI) is helping researchers to map the movements of endangered river dolphins. A neural network was trained to recognize the clicks and whistles of the boto (Inia geoffrensis), or pink river dolphin, and tucuxi (Sotalia fluviatilis) in the noisy soundscape of the Amazon River. The AI can distinguish between the two species and other common sounds such as those produced by rainfall and boat engines. Using sound is much less invasive than is tracking the animals with GPS tags, boats or aerial drones.Nature | 4 min read Reference: Scientific Reports paper

Dirty Politics As the current Conservative Party runs out of intellectual coherence, it has resorted to culture wars as an electoral weapon. Astute readers will recognise this as a variant on the ad hominem school of intellectual fallacy. The Conversation discusses

https://theconversation.com/britains-next-election-could-be-a-climate-change-culture-war-210351?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%

The tragedy of Israel Israel is still the only democracy in the Middle East, founded with the highest possible hopes. For these reasons, we have tended to support them on most occasions, being right there back in 1967 and 1973. But what happens when they fall prey to a brute like Netanyahu and his deranged followers? Jonathan Freedland is on top form for the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/28/israelis-benjamin-netanyahu-democracy-protests-donald-trump

Have a good weekend

#tigers #israel #netanyahu #AI #conservation

Yesterday’s little blog (LSS 28 7 23) has produced certain reactions: some in favour, one or two markedly against. To show the world that we are a true Whig website, faithful to the spirit of Bertrand Russell, we will shortly offer a right of reply to regular reader who comes from anmother part of the political spectrum.

For personal reasons, and because of where he/she works(we have to be that circumspect, readers) the writer has requested absolute anonymity. And also a little time to prepare the piece!

But prepare it they shall, and we hope to bring it to you soon. In the spirit of fair play, balance and all that.

#bertrand russell #whig #balance

Air pollution kills. Whether by poisons like nitrogen dioxide, tiny particles or maybe even the C0₂ itself(see LSS 20 11 20) it causes asthma, cancer, heart disease and possibly dementia. Its effects fall mainly on poorer people. You’d think they would want to get rid of it at all costs, as soon as possible. Yet recent attempts to extend the London ULEZ zone [2] had so enraged a significant section of voters that the Labour Party was denied by election win in a key outer London marginal. What is going on? Do people really vote against their own interests? Or is there a better explanation?

Yes, a typical voter, particularly one hardscrabbling a living at the poorer edges of society will still know about air pollution and how it damages their children. But most have a closer, more pressing urgency; to see those children fed. And in an economy where margins have become so impossibly tight, the £12.50 charge to enter the ULEZ zone can make a real difference, especially to those like builders or van drivers who may have to cross it several times a day. Of course they voted against-wouldn’t you? And so, just when a really crucial, life enhancing reform needed all the support it could get, a vital set of potential supporters fell away.

“Cut wages the minimum-we’re paying ourselves to much!” was the key mantra of the Thatcher years from 1979 to 1990. Only a drastic fall in real wages would allow the economy to thrive, ran the old nostrum. In its name millions of secure, unionised and well paid jobs were abolished. To be replaced by precarious self-employment in jobs like delivery, building trades, taxi driving and the like. The effect was to drive a deep wedge between progressive opinion and large sections of the working class. The early signs were apparent at the Stanlake disruption of 2000, a geezers-in-vans uprising if ever there was one. It has grown and anastomosed ever since, aided and abetted by a well funded ecosystem of “news”outlets such as The Sun and GB News. Now, when it is even in the billionaires’ interests to achieve a cleaner planet, the critical social mass has gone missing.

We still have a little time to clean the noxious clouds of filth the shroud us. But progress is slow. And it was Margaret Thatcher who chained the fetters which slow us. That will one day be seen as her truly toxic legacy.

[1]https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-air-pollution/health-matters-air-pollution

[2]https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/environment-and-climate-change/pollution-and-air-quality/ultra-low-emission-zone-ulez-london

#margaret thatcher #pollution #particulates #ULEZ zone #london

Back in the long-ago days of Covid lockdown, we set you a puzzle: what to make of the enigmatic remains of Homo Naledi from the Rising Star Caves in South Africa. It was very much in the spirit of brain teasers like crosswords or computer chess, and there was no right answer. But the material found, with its curious mix of primitive and advanced features, is certainly intriguing. It’s as if Rolls Royce had tried to build a car using combining bits of a 1923 Silver Ghost with its 2023 descendent.

Which is why we are not surprised to find a bit of push back against some of the claims made for naledi. As Nature Briefings so presciently observes:

Archaeologists wowed viewers of a documentary — released last week — with stunning scenes of a cave crammed with bone fossils that, they argue, are the remains of the earliest-known burial by humans or their extinct relative Homo naledi. But days earlier, four scientists who peer-reviewed the paper making those claims called the supporting evidence “inadequate” in the open-access journal eLife. The study is a high-profile test of the journal’s innovative publishing model: it no longer formally accepts papers, but instead publishes them alongside peer reviewers’ reports.Nature | 6 min read

As so often happens in Paleontology, as in other sciences, as soon as someone makes a big claim, someone else comes along to assert the opposite. We won’t go into a pseudo-philosophical riff on Hegel and the dialectic here-we want people to enjoy this blog-but it does reflect a deeper truth which we’ve alluded to once or twice in these pages. Data is one thing and interpretation quite another. In this case, we don’t know which side is right, but in the last resort it’s only a few old fossils, and being scientists, they will all settle their differences without gunfire.

But it illustrates a deeper truth Because it’s not just about science but life in general, as the recent case of Andrew Malkinson [1] demonstrates. Where the consequences of confusing interpretation with facts can be very grave indeed. Perhaps there would be less miscarriages of justice, and fewer bad referendum results, if people thought more and believed less.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-66323436?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

#evolution #data ##andrew malkinson #miscarriage of justice