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Good News for Friday November 4, 2022 [1]
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Date: 2022-11-04
"Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute." Fyodor Dostoevsky
It’s important to keep your mind under control.
Here are some things I have been thinking about this week while trying to not think about other things that I didn’t put in this diary.
The Arc of the History Bending Towards a Better World
Prediction for Artists
Why Musicians & Other Creative Professionals Will Soon Get Their Revenge on the Old Guard
An interesting perspective on the future for creative artists. The gist is that music companies and publishers deliver nothing important to artists now. Instead “influencers” (he admits to cringing at the term) can provide better access to audiences. There are enough of these people that they won’t be able to charge much for that access, but then they won’t be doing much other than loaning their platform.
I spend a lot of time on YouTube and I often find interesting new channels when they collaborate with someone I already am following. I don’t need someone in the middle collecting money.
Adele McAllister is one of the musicians I found by chance.
x YouTube Video
Increased Abortion Drug Access
Abortion drug availability and use is surging across the country. There has been a decrease in surgical abortions performed by clinicians but that has been partially countered by drug abortions.
Drug abortions are better for patients in a number of ways. They are much cheaper (about 1/10 the cost), they don’t involve going to a clinic, and they are less intrusive. For some reason the US has not widely adopted drug abortions (my cynical side says “1/10 the cost? Duh.”).
The Biden administration eliminated a nonsensical FDA restriction on how pharmacies can dispense abortion drugs. That opened up the option of telemedicine consults and getting the drugs by mail. Telemedicine is regulated at the state level but drug delivery is probably under control of the FDA. A few clinics in abortion-friendly states are trying cross-border telemedicine; there will certainly be court tests of this.
The FDA is also reviewing the status of abortion drugs. Advisory panels have already said there is no medical or scientific justification for them being prescription-only. If they become over the counter then the forced birthers will be finished.
Women on Web, Aid Access, and their imitators are international groups that do telemedicine from countries where abortion is legal and then send prescriptions from India. Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, who founded both groups, believes the best solution is to provide drugs to people before they get pregnant. That will take the doctors and pharmacists out of the decision loop.
There are only about a million abortions in the US each year, and many of those are in states where abortion is fully legal. So all that is needed is a network to supply pregnant people in the remaining areas with the drugs. Our entrepreneurial society has managed to build effective underground distribution systems for moonshine, heroin, LSD, marijuana, cocaine, meth, fentanyl and a host of other illegal drugs. I am sure we are up to this challenge.
International stuff
Ethopia Potential Good News
Ethiopia: Government, Tigray Rebels Agree to Cessation of Hostilities
The Ethiopian government and the rebel Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) agreed to a permanent cessation of hostilities following four days of peace talks in Pretoria, South Africa, Bloomberg reported Nov. 2.
This should be taken with a grain of salt. It is not clear that either group has control over the fighters or that either one really wants peace.
Iran Karma
The Iranian ayatollah rulers have been supporting Putin’s war. They probably feel a kinship- in the 1980s they came up with a plan to use the power of the state to loot most of the wealth of the country. The ones at the top are multi-billionaires. Iran is a kleptocracy posing as a theocracy. Putin copied that plan two decades later.
The nationwide protests were sparked by the regime’s murder of a young woman for wearing her head scarf “wrong”. But there is another reason people were already upset. Food prices have almost doubled this year. Why? Two of the major reasons are sanctions because of the hardliner’s nuclear program and the global food inflation caused by Putin’s war.
Putin’s Declining Influence
No breakthrough in Armenia, Azerbaijan peace talks in Russia
In the past Russia has been able to impose peace conditions on these two former SSRs. With his army in tatters he has no leverage. It’s not good news that there will continue to be conflict but it has been going on for centuries and an external solution won’t work.
Science Stuff
Gene Transfer Between Species Classes
How Genes Can Leap From Snakes to Frogs in Madagascar
tl;dr: Transposons.
My buddy Hugh Robertson long ago showed widespread transfer of transposons, first widely among insects and then across phyla. Here is his research page from 1998 that describes his early work.
My first year in graduate school (1974-75) we had a mandatory lecture series given by all the department’s professors to get us up to speed on their research areas. Before I figured out there was no enforcement policy I heard one talk that I still remember.
Milt Saier (who is still active at UCSD!?) went over recent cutting-edge research on bacterial motility*. After half on hour boring me on that, he described research done in the 1950s that reached the same conclusion, before the print edition of Science Citation Index started. He pointed out that most of us only found out things from 1964 onward because we relied on the SCI to find previous work. Then he described work done in the 19th century that reached the same conclusion, which had been forgotten by the 1950s. Finally he quoted something Leewenhoek had written around 1700 that reached the same conclusion. We scientists believe that our knowledge is cumulative rather than cyclical. Isn't it pretty to think so?
* Or something like that- it was almost half a century ago and I didn’t care about the subject. Ironically at the end of my career I was a coauthor on a couple of papers on bacterial (spirochete) motility.
Long COVID (so much for only thinking about good things)
I am never sure what to call myself when people ask what I did for a living: biologist, biochemist, molecular biologist, evolutionary biologist are all part of it. But the unifying theme was genetics.
That is why I joined 23andMe immediately when it first started. I had been running the WVU IRBs and had seen the problems in getting enough research subjects to find the causes of disease. A major cancer study hopes to get dozens of subjects across the country. 23andMe’s strategy of sucking in participants by promising them access to information about their own genetics (and later by genetic genealogy) was brilliant. They now have millions of customers and can provide orders of magnitude more subjects than any traditional study.
The latest study (from May) is on long COVID but for some reason it popped up in the NYT newsletter this week. The population studied was 100,000 people who had had COVID and 20,000 who reported they had long COVID. These numbers are orders of magnitude greater than any hospital could enroll. AFAIK there is no other study on any similar disease with this number of participants.
The main findings (some of which confirm previous smaller studies):
A previous diagnosis of anxiety or depression doubled the risk.
A previous diagnosis of cardiometabolic disease almost doubled it.
disease almost doubled it. Being hospitalized for COVID increased the risk ten-fold.
Women (XX) were twice as likely to get long COVID as men (XY) and their symptoms last longer (although men are more likely to die during the acute infection).
Having an autoimmune disease increases the risk.
1/3 of those who subsequently were vaccinated reported improvement, ½ saw no change, and1/6 reported worse symptoms.
Long COVID disrupts menstrual cycles.
I find the sex difference interesting. If there is an X-linked allele circulating in the population that provides susceptibility to long COVID women would be twice as likely to have it since they have twice as many X chromosomes. It’s a neat explanation but 23andMe should have picked it up since they have DNA sequence data on all the people.
An alternative explanation is that the hormonal differences between women and men is the cause. This could be tested by comparing transgender (who are taking hormones) to cisgender women and men. 23andMe may have a big enough database to do this.
Long COVID is not an unusual disease. There are many other cases where infectious diseases lead to longterm effects after the infection is cleared. Chronic fatigue (myalgic encephalomyelitis), autoimmune disorders, and other mysterious syndromes are often triggered by relatively mild pathogens. A big problem has been finding a good population to study since the diagnoses are fuzzy and the etiology is usually unknown. The enormous long COVID cohort should be a good population to study to get to the bottom of these problems. Perhaps COVID will have some benefits to people living with these terrible diseases.
Kate Wolf composed this beautiful song for her friend Wavy Gravy as she was dying.
x YouTube Video
Playing Computer Games Helps in the Real World
What is the association between video gaming and cognition in children?
Overall, the study found that video gaming was associated with improved cognitive function involving working memory and response inhibition. Despite the high CBCL scores in video gamers, the results suggest the possibility that the cognitive training provided by video games could have substantial neurocognitive growth outcomes. The longitudinal nature of the ABCD study will enable researchers to investigate cognitive correlates in the participants over the years and even examine the associations between behavioral issues and video gaming over time.
NASCAR driver stuns racing world with a move learned from Nintendo GameCube
Typically, when taking a tight turn on a racetrack, drivers brake to counteract forces that push their cars toward the outside of the track. This braking action dramatically slows them down on the turn. This time, instead of slowing down for the turn, Chastain kept his car in fifth gear, hugged the wall, let go of the wheel, and allowed the wall to hold his car in place—no brakes necessary. That's how he passed five cars and set a 75-year lap record.
Even he admits this is insane: "Once I got against the wall, I basically let go of the wheel and just hoped I didn't catch the turn four access gate or something crazy," Chastain said, "But I was willing to do it."
x YouTube Video
Clickbait Science Headlines
When Sarcastic Fringeheads Open Their Mouths, Watch Out
The article is behind the NYT paywall so I can’t read it, but that’s ok. As Dave Barry would point out, “The Sarcastic Fringeheads” would be a great name for a grunge rock band.
Pig vomit toxin key to Martian meteorite mystery
This is from last week but it clearly belongs here. I had to read the article because I couldn’t figure out how those four nouns at the beginning made sense together.
Sharing a Jacuzzi with a Porcupine (shameless self promotion)
If only Jessica had used that as her headline, but the ARS was a stodgy organization.
Empty Hats usually does upbeat songs. This is a good one to end with.
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