We’ve always sung the praises of bacteriophages, those handy little viruses that kill infectious bacteria, saving the trouble of deploying antibiotics. But now a paper in Nature suggests they have a further unexpected use, as indicators to make vaccination programmes efficient and cheap.
If you want to avoid the use of precious antibiotics, vaccinate your population. Take typhoid for example. It’s a filthy, horrible disease that lurks in dirty water. Despite best efforts, it’s still killing about 140 000 people a year.[1] What if you could vaccinate whole populations, especially in high risk areas, and bring down its prevalence to nought? Easier said than done. Vaccination programmes are difficult and expensive. First you have to identify your target area, and finding the bacterium Salmonella enterica: serotype Typhus can be tricky, expensive and unreliable. But there’s a ray of hope. Teams at the University of Lisbon and others have found that the bacteriophages which infect the bacterium are much more robust than their host, and survive for much longer in water samples. Making identification, targeting and planning in at risk areas a whole lot simpler. [2]
We always like it it when someone flips an existing idea and takes it in a sudden, new and unexpectedly beneficial direction. Looks like these people have done it again.
We at LSS have always been interested in words. Where they come from. What they mean. How different people can string them together in different ways to achieve different effects. Poets. Philosophers. Scientists. Doctors. Teachers, that sort of thing. So it’s a problem for us when we feel a word is lacking. That none of the words in the current lexicon can quite describe or convey a phenomenon which we have observed, newly, and wish to classify.
And what is the phenomenon? Well recently, the new Taleban administration in Afghanistan has abolished education for women. Yes, you read it correctly, they have really and truly done it. Here’s a couple of links to describe what they’ve done [1] [2], and we’re sure you’ll find more as you drill down.
So what’s this new word going to look like? Well it has to be an adjective, that’s for sure. And, as soon as it is heard or read it must convey several qualities. What qualities? Stupidity of the densest possible quality. Ignorance. Blind stubborn obstinacy. An utterly egoistical refusal to think. A weird pervy sort of misogyny. Short-sightedness. Economic illiteracy. Cruelty. Coining such a term is clearly going to be quite a task.
Unconditional love. Companionship. Decreased levels of stress and anxiety. Someone to have an intelligent conversation with, more so than with most people you meet. These are the advantages of owning a dog or a cat. And long may it continue, we say.
Animal lovers we may be, but this is also a blog devoted to the arts and sciences of countering microbial antibiotic resistance. And so we have to warn you of a tiny cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, that may one day intrude upon this Eden. As it comes from Robin McKie[1] of the Guardian, we take it seriously indeed. Researchers at the famous Charité Hospital in Berlin have found that dogs and cats may be acting as a reservoir of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Implication: they could be giving it to us, and we could be giving it to them. The full statistics are in Robin’s article. For us the key takeaway at this state is that only 30% of sampled humans carried the resistant organisms, Of these only 9% had cats and of these cats, only 5% carried the organisms. At 0.00135% that’s pretty low. The figures for our canine chums come out a tiny bit higher, but not enough to alarm.
And our thoughts, as both ailurophiles and doughty warriors in the war against microbial resistance? Let’s keep our powder dry, and plough on. The real benefits of solving this whole problem will be shared by ourselves and our furry friends Keep pushing for more research. Keep pushing to avoids misuse of our precious antibiotics. And try to persuade your leaders to do the same.
The war on women continues. Current battlefronts include places like Wyoming[1], Iran and Afghanistan, where the local Taliban or whatever they call themselves, are up to their old tricks.
Before you join them, have a look at this piece from History Hit,[2] which came up from our researchers yesterday. Okay, we’ve already done Ada Lovelace (LSS 24 7 21) and we always knew Hedy Lamarr was a genius with an off-the-scale IQ. But take a look at some of the others. Anne Tsukamoto: Stem Cell Isolation. Shirley Anne Jackson: Caller ID. Patricia Bath: Laser Cataract surgery. Grace Hopper: Computer compilers. And there are more ,as you will discover in this excellent little piece by Lucy Davidson.
And what do the women haters offer by comparison? Guns. Poverty. Boredom. Quotes from old books, usually out of context, and in complete ignorance of the linguistic and historical origins of the said texts. Repression both physical, and of the infinitely more insidious psychological kind. Could it be possible, just once that even one of them, somewhere, might just consider the possibility that they’ve got it all wrong?
If the world is reduced to ashes by a nuclear war between the United States and the many peoples who hate it, any surviving historians may well want to ask; “why?” Most of the answers trail back to the Iraq war of 2003, and the utter collapse it entailed. We could waste paragraphs on the waste of lives. The squandering of treasures. The unleashing of ISIS and a myriad of other groups, all in the name of a “War on Terror”. The chain of disasters which followed- such as the financial crash, Brexit and Trump. But we want to concentrate on the biggest, most awful miscalculation of all.
Jonathan Freedland is one of the most thoughtful, humble and intelligent of all the columnists we follow. (rare qualities indeed in a journalist, but let that pass for now) He is, and always has been, incredibly well-connected. And in those years preceding the Awful Catastrophe, he was buzzing around London and Washington. Bumping up against some of the third-rate minds with first-rate egos who caused the disaster. We’ve two of his columns for you here, one written yesterday and one in 2002. Get that, 2002. Before the Awful Catastrophe. Some prescience, huh? [1] [2] For this was the passage that gave us goosebumps:
Some of the most sharp-clawed hawks are even hailing this as the first step in a much grander, global strategy: to paint the planet in stars and stripes, stretching US domination from Baghdad to Beijing. Once Saddam is out of the way, they whisper, Washington can turn to China. The aim: to keep America as the world’s sole superpower for decades to come.
Blinded by hubris, the Neocons around Bush, and their cheerleaders in the media, ignored one key fact. Their adventure sent a message; “one day, we’ll come for you“. In their self-confident universe, no centre of power, no possible alternative to Washington, was to be permitted. Not in Brussels, Moscow, Beijing, nor anywhere else. And so, as the war began, others took note, and began to arm. They may indeed be unpleasant regimes, staffed with unpleasant people. But from their point of view: who can blame them?
It is hard to convey to young people now the sense of a peaceful world, with limitless possibilities that existed between 1989 and 2002. Maybe the American unipolar moment was a Good Thing. But it is over now. As for why, those historians of the future might loo start their investigations in the years 2001 -2003 and ask why the following gentlemen* took the decisions they did: George W Bush. Donald Rumsfeld. Dick Cheney. Richard Perle, Rupert Murdoch and Douglas Feith. Thanks, boys.
#2003 #iraq war #george w bush #neocon #dick cheney #saddam hussein #ISIS #Al Queda #war on terror
we entirely exempt Condoleeza Rice from any blame as we consider her to be a harmless, well intentioned woman who seemed to be bereft of agency in this whole sorry mess
Nostalgists are always telling us how much better everything was in the past-simpler, ordered, more law-abiding and clean. A view much beloved of certain elderly and slightly dim journalists who write for Sunday newspapers, for example. Before you believe them, you would do well to consider the infamous gin epidemic of the eighteenth century, which nearly destroyed society, and inspired one of the most famous artworks of all time: Hogarth’s Gin Lane
The history which we present today How a Gin Craze nearly destroyed 18th-century London by Harry Sword is so well written and fun to read that we will do nothing here but implore you to click on the link [1]. Really. Go on. Now.
And remember. Tonight as you sip your martini, or gin tonica, or Singapore sling (it’s still the wrong side of Easter for Pimms) remember this. What you are drinking was once the crack cocaine of its day. Puts all that Palladian in perspective, eh, what?
Covid: It’s a racoon dog’s life Two for you today on the mysterious origins of Covid-19, one in English, one in Spanish, Latest culprit is the Racoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides). We remain to be convinced by any of them at this stage.
China Crisis You won’t understand modern China until you have considered the terrible Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, which ushered in a century of instability and humiliation for that proud civilisation. Since 1949 their overwhelming cry has been “never again!”
Venus Volcano Are other worlds in our solar system geologically active? If so, what are the implications for finding life? Nature answers the first question here
Scientists think they’ve spotted a volcano erupting on Venus. Radar images taken 8 months apart by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s show changes to a volcanic vent that suggest an eruption or magma flow. Venus is covered in volcanoes, and this is some of the strongest evidence yet that at least one of them is still active. Venus doesn’t have plate tectonics that could drive volcanic activity, so it could be caused by heat released from radioactive elements.Nature | 5 min read Reference: Science paper
History rethought We’re encouraged to think of History in neat periods. You know the sequence:The Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Romans, the Anglo Saxons, Medieval, Tudors, Industrial Revolution, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Hippies, Punk, reality cooking shows….and so it goes. Each major new era is a fresh start, wiping the slate clean, so to speak. But reality was more complicated, as this amazing discovery from England shows Romans and Anglo Saxons rubbing along cheek by jowl. Did they realise they’d failed a history exam?
The Last Emperor? One of the best western films that tried to make sense of the Chinese experience was Bertolucci’s The Last emperor (1987) Here’s a slice of David Byrne (yep-he of Talking Heads) as he tries his take on oriental themes for the title sequence
It’s not that we blow our own trumpet. Or that we like to say “told you so” with a smug leer. But when someone much cleverer than us shows we did; and when that someone is called Make UK, we do feel entitled to give in to the urge to polish our credentials. A bit. So how come?
Yesterday we published a blog which suggested that the UK joined the European Horizon programme. Apart from a group of men who were mending the roof, and called us “TRAYTURS!”, reaction on the whole was favourable. With one reservation “it’s too sciencey, this blog! Of course scientists want to join something like Horizon. What about the practical people who actually do the work?” So we thought we’d ask some.
You can’t get more practical or economically useful that Make UK[1] It’s a sort of business association for manufacturers in this country. An example of one of those utterly professional but unsung organisations , entirely free of the Government which represents a truly healthy economy and society. Manufacturing has shrunk dreadfully in this country since 1979, but it still employs more than 3 million people and contributes to our prosperity out of all proportion to its size. So we thought we’d approach them and ask what they thought of our theory. They very kindly sent us a speech from one of their events, from which we gratefully extract the following.
It’s also vital that the UK retains its place in the EU’s Horizon Programme and hopefully last week’s agreement will ensure this. Horizon has always been one of those areas of the EU Budget where the UK get more out than it puts in. Of the nearly 7000 principal recipients of European Research Council grants under the Horizon 2020 programme around a fifth were to UK institutions. We cannot afford to let the UK’s participation slide as a result of quite frankly pointless and unnecessary points of principle about the minor role of the European Court of Justice. This is simply irrelevant to those of us in the real world
….. Currently, manufacturing accounts for around 10% of GDP but, if we can build it back up to 15%, it would add a remarkable £142bn to the UK economy, create many high skill high value jobs and contribute substantially to the levelling up and re-balancing we need to see.
Firstly, LSS is not just a blog retailing other peoples’ news stories. We have started to bring you original stuff ourselves, a trend which we hope to continue. And secondly-these people are not ivory tower scientists, but practical men and women for whom cash ultimately has to be the bottom line. We still say: there is hope for a good life for people in these islands. Provided that from now on they take the time to make the right decisions.
Photo by Megapixelstock on Pexels.comPhoto by Nur Andi Ravsanjani Gusma on Pexels.comPhoto by Renato Danyi on Pexels.com
Somaiya Begum was twenty. She was a student of biomedicine at Leeds Beckett University. If that’s not promise, we don’t know what is. Instead, she was murdered with an 28 cm steel bradawl, and her body left to rot. The motive? She had refused to marry a much older man from Pakistan, chosen for her by her family. Not her choice, they decided. [1] Yesterday her uncle Taroos Khan was convicted of the murder. Some uncle!
But monsters like Khan are the tip of an iceberg. Forced marriage is one of the commonest forms of human trafficking (that’s “slavery” to us). Of the 40.3 million slaves around the world, 15.4 millions are in forced marriages according to Human Trafficking Search [2] There’s hundreds, of not thousands of predators like Khan prowling the world now. Of all the threats to female emancipation, this is the most insidious, because it is so common. And so accepted in some cultures.
LSS readers, you know where we stand. The emancipation of women is the emancipation of us all. Who you marry, who you sleep with, goddammit, is the most basic choice of all. And this time you can do something about it. Try clicking on the website our girl [3] where you can get facts, figures and media streams and see if you can help. It could be your daughter, sister or friend who’s next. Please!
On Monday we published a little blog (LSS 13 3 23) in which we hoped that UK PLC might be “turning the corner” Maybe. Because we have links to two devastating articles, one from Tom Rees and colleagues for Bloomberg, and one from Martin Samuels from the Times, who paint a very different picture (Spoiler alert: you’ll need to jump the paywall for these, but we promise you; they’re worth it) [2] [3]
So why are we saying all this? Because the UK Finance Minister, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is presenting his budget today. And yes, he will be fiddling with all those tax-ey, demand-ey minutiae which Chancellors do from time to time. But we think he’s like a man playing with a toy yacht in the swimming pool on a cruise liner. Whichever way he sends his yacht, it’s ultimate destination will be determined elsewhere. But there is one thing he could try.
The Horizon scheme is not a nerdy 1970s TV show for scientists. It’s a vast collaborative network of researchers, awash with money and new ideas which could clearly make a long term difference to the UK’s dreadful economic performance. And scientists, business folk, anyone with a rational, patriotic interest in getting us all a little more money are screaming for it [4] Now we could wax lyrical about how changes in science seem to raise the general standard of the economy long term. The telescope, the steam engine, the computer (alright, I get it-ed) But if you want something a little more detailed, try this link from the IMF [1]
We’re hoping to follow up on this by getting some reactions from real time business experts. We promise to come back to you when we do. Meanwhile, Jeremy, if you’re reading this-it’s just a thought!
Learning, Science and Society 