New attack on cancer? (in mice)

Cancer cells delete the part of their own DNA that normally keeps them from reproducing out of control. Bad news (from the cancer’s viewpoint)? This deletion also removes some genes that any cell needs to survive. Good news (from the cancer’s viewpoint)? The cell has a backup version of the genes needed for survival.

So what happens if we turn off the backup genes? Normal cells don’t notice, their first set of genes is working just fine. But cancer cells are now screwed.

Again, this is in mice and may work differently in people. And it’s a very small study. But it might be very important…

Lots of articles on MTHFD2 inhibitors, but this one is clearer than most. 550 words: https://scitechdaily.com/cancer-weakness-discovered-new-method-pushes-cancer-cells-into-remission/.

The Russian Army

Russia has 146 million people and a GDP around $4 trillion. Ukraine has 43 million people and a GDP of $545 billion. (All numbers from the internet and approximate.)

So Russia has over three times the population and over seven times the GDP of Ukraine. Why haven’t they simply crushed Ukraine?

Lots of reasons. One major reason is the atrocious performance of the Russian armed forces. This article https://medium.com/@dylan.combellick/why-russia-cant-have-nco-s-9c20577111f4 discusses the makeup and training of their military. (About 2,400 words.)

Don’t the Russians train, too? Well, no. They don’t. Not at the NCO level, anyway. Nearly everything the average soldier learns in the Russian military is on-the-job training. Don’t get me wrong, this is the best kind of training for many circumstances, but ONLY when it is done upon a solid foundation — and that’s what Russia lacks…

Variety. Every officer and enlisted in the US military moves between jobs on a regular basis — typically every three years. For the most part they are still working within their broad specialty — a mechanic is a mechanic — but the exact vehicles they service, the environment they service them (storage depot, training base, operating base) change frequently. In the Russian military they often stay at the same job for their entire career. I know that in the New START missions there were Russian counterparts who had been doing the same job for thirty years…

Corruption. At no point can a large shipment of parts go missing for the NCO to sell on the black market — they will be discovered pretty soon. In the Russian system there is no check on this behavior. Once they’re in the job they can probably keep it forever if they want to. They can cut in superiors and inferiors into the corruption to look the other way. They are also more or less permanently and can coverup indefinitely…

Conscripts are treated like garbage. The Russian mentality is one of power and exploitation. If you are powerful it is your right to exploit those lower down the line, and it is in your interest to avoid exploitation from those above you. There is no concept of teamwork or working for a greater purpose — everyone is in it for themselves.

(For what it’s worth, Russia is the world’s ninth largest economy by GDP, hardly a superpower. California has around 39 million people and a GDP almost the size of Russia’s at $3.63 trillion.)

Dave Barry Year in Review 2022

Yah, there’s a lot of serious stuff I could do here (if you haven’t heard of ChatGPT, you will), but for the new year, let’s review 2022. Some samples:

MARCH:

In entertainment news, the venerable Rolling Stones announce that they will hit the road this summer for their Drool on the Microphone Tour. This will be the Stones’ seventh tour since 2003, when their physical bodies finally disintegrated into small piles of dust and they were replaced by holograms. The good news is, ticket prices for the new tour will start as low as $150. The bad news is the $150 seats are so far from the stage that the sound will not reach them until after the concert is over.

JUNE:

Johnny Depp wins his historic defamation lawsuit, with the jury ordering Amber Heard to repay the 783 billion person-hours the American public wasted watching the trial. The verdict unleashes a wave of thoughtful media think pieces the likes of which the nation has not seen since Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.

AUGUST:

In other political news, Congress passes the Inflation Reduction Act, which will reduce inflation because it says so right in the title. The act will also lower prescription-drug prices, fix climate change, reform the tax system and provide every qualified American with a puppy. This is viewed as a much-needed win for the Biden administration and a boost for the Democrats heading into the midterm elections, where they could also benefit from the fact that in a number of key races the Republicans have decided, for tactical reasons, to nominate lunatics.

The whole thing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/12/25/dave-barrys-2022-year-review/

Silly walk calories

Walking like John Cleese’s character, Mr. Teabag, in Monty Python’s famous “Ministry of Silly Walks” skit requires considerably more energy expenditure than a normal walking gait because the movement is so inefficient, according to a new paper published in the annual Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal. In fact, just 11 minutes a day of walking like Mr. Teabag was equivalent to 75 minutes of vigorously intense physical activity per week, presenting a novel means of boosting cardiovascular fitness.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/adopting-a-silly-walk-like-monty-pythons-mr-teabag-burns-more-calories/

The Atlantic’s top 10 breakthroughs of 2022

It’s been an amazing year in science, medicine, technology. The Atlantic has an article on what one writer thinks will be very important. Many of these have not really made the news (partly because many of these are the beginnings of breakthroughs and not yet available). Categories:

  • The Generative-AI Eruption
    Large language models, such as ChatGPT, can answer complex questions, spit out bespoke Wikipedia articles in seconds, write song lyrics, and even conjure—admittedly mediocre—essays in the style of well-known writers. ((This has been getting a lot of attention in the past month.))
  • The Power to Reverse Death (Kind Of)
    By pumping an experimental substance into the veins and arteries of animals that had been lying deceased for an hour, Yale researchers got their hearts to start beating again. … If we have the power to reanimate the heart or other organs of the recently deceased, at what point might we be able to reverse sudden deaths? Could we stock hospitals and nursing homes with buckets of the stuff to resuscitate patients? Should every future American household keep some on hand in the event of a terrible accident?
  • The Power to Synthesize Life (Kind Of)
    This summer, scientists grew an embryo in a lab without the use of sperm, or eggs, or a womb. It happened to be that of a mouse. … Using only stem cells, a team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel forged something in a lab that budded a tail on day six, grew a beating heart by day eight, and even evinced the beginnings of a brain.
  • The Vaccine Cavalry Is Coming
    In September, a new malaria vaccine developed by Oxford University scientists was found to be extremely effective… In November, an experimental flu vaccine was found to induce a protective immune response against all known types of flu in animals. ((Italics mine.))
  • A Snapshot of the Beginning of Time
    The exquisite photos could lead us to new discoveries in cosmology…. Behind those lush and dreamy images might lie evidence of what actually happened during, or just after, the Big Bang…. The James Webb Telescope is so much more than the solar system’s most sophisticated camera-zoom function. It is also history’s greatest time machine.
  • ‘Unheard of’ Advances in Fighting Cancer
    In a trial with 18 rectal-cancer patients who were prescribed a novel immunotherapy, researchers found that the cancer vanished in every single patient. No, not receded. Vanished. … Months later, a trial of a new metastatic-breast-cancer drug delivered similarly miraculous results.
  • The Obesity-Therapy Surge
    In the 2010s, patients on the diabetes medication semaglutide noticed something interesting: They were losing a ton of weight. And that side effect wasn’t a fluke. Last year, the FDA approved injectable semaglutide for weight loss under a new name: Wegovy. And it’s not the only medication in the pipeline that helps people lose weight without suffering major side effects.
  • Cracking the Case of Multiple Sclerosis
    This year, a team of scientists… reported strong evidence that the Epstein-Barr virus, best known for causing mononucleosis, is the leading cause of multiple sclerosis. Infection with EBV raised the odds of developing multiple sclerosis, or MS, by more than thirtyfold.
  • Legal Lab Meat
    Some breakthroughs are about new rules, not just new technology. This year, the FDA cleared a California company, Upside Foods, to produce lab-grown chicken. It is the first-ever cultivated-meat product to pass this key regulatory hurdle.
  • New Toys for the Green-Energy Revolution
    Fighting climate change will require the deployment of technologies already invented, such as solar panels and wind turbines. But it will also require new inventions in fields like nuclear and geothermal technology. This year, we edged closer to breakthroughs in both categories.

About 2,900 words: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/technology-medicine-law-ai-10-breakthroughs-2022/672390/.

How the war in Ukraine might end

Wars start for a number of reasons which have been fairly thoroughly considered by historians. But why do they end? For a number of reasons. One side may decide that it’s losing and it can trust the other side to abide by a peace deal. Or one side may be completely crushed by the other side. An important part of the situation is the political situation of the leader of the side that’s losing:

…Democrats tended to respond to the information delivered by the war and act accordingly; at the very worst, if they lost the war but their country still existed, they would get turned out of office and go on a book tour. Dictators, because they had total control of their domestic audience, could also end wars when they needed to. After the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was such a leader; he simply killed anyone who criticized him. The trouble…lay with the leaders who were neither democrats nor dictators: because they were repressive, they often met with bad ends, but because they were not repressive enough, they had to think about public opinion and whether it was turning on them. These leaders…would be tempted to “gamble for resurrection,” to continue prosecuting the war, often at greater and greater intensity, because anything short of victory could mean their own exile or death. He reminded me that on November 17, 1914—four months after the First World War began—Kaiser Wilhelm II met with his war cabinet and concluded that the war was unwinnable. “Still, they fought on for another four years,” Goemans said. “And the reason was that they knew that if they lost they would be overthrown, there would be a revolution.” And they were right.

I had not known that last bit before. Pretty amazing. And it directly relates to Vladimir Putin. Full article at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/how-the-war-in-ukraine-might-end (approx 3,100 words).

Russia and Iran updates

Hopefully this post will be obsolete soon, but meanwhile here is a site with daily, detailed updates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the protests in Iran. This includes political and social forces pushing the situations in various directions (did you know that Ayatollah Khamenei has a son, who might or might not become his successor? Or that militarist bloggers in Russia are demanding a broader, more devastating war?). For example:

Iran Crisis Update, November 23

Nov 23, 2022 – Press ISW

Protest activity and strikes will likely increase in the coming days. Protest coordinators and organizations have called for countrywide demonstrations from November 24-26 in solidarity with the protesters in Kurdistan Province. The regime has deployed the IRGC Ground Forces to cities and towns throughout Kurdistan Province to brutally crack down on protesters, as CTP previously reported. Twenty-nine neighborhood youth groups issued a joint statement on November 23 calling for the upcoming protests, demonstrating a degree of overt coordination that CTP has not previously observed.

(“CTP” is the “Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute with support from the Institute for the Study of War.”)

Click on the article heading (eg Iran Crisis Update, November 23) for a detailed report. For the Russia reports, there is a lot of detailed, town-by-town information, but do check the end of each report for another summary.

https://www.understandingwar.org/

Dating tweets

For examples:

I can tell climate change is real because men aren’t holding as many fish in their dating profiles.

yes!! the place for performative activism is on your dating app profile !! yes!

dating apps are punishment for being single

Men on dating apps keep requiring that I speak fluent sarcasm but they don’t have that on duolingo 😔😔😔😔☹️🙁😩😣😞😔😫😫 what do I do

More at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dating-tweets_l_634d9aa8e4b0b7f89f5986c9.

Universal basic income (UBI)

Experiments are showing that, at least in some cases, the simplest and most effective solution to poverty is… giving people money.

More than twenty pilot programs are taking place across the country. Many other programs attempt to help poor people: food stamps, welfare, Section 8 housing vouchers (“which often have stringent rules and leave many poor families ineligible.“) Perhaps we could combine all these programs into one simpler, less expensive program.

The pilot is testing whether giving poor families a financial cushion can have a demonstrable impact on their physical and psychological health, job prospects and communities…

While Leo used a few bucks from Compton Pledge for a fried rice dinner, the rest of it went to more pressing causes: a $250 car diagnostic tool enabling him to take on more mechanic jobs, a college textbook for his 23-year-old stepdaughter Lesley, a few hundred dollars sent to his ailing mother in Guatemala, and payments towards a $3,000 payday loan that has accrued nearly $1,000 in interest fees in less than two years.

September 2021: Inside the Nation’s Largest Guaranteed Income Experiment. https://time.com/6097523/compton-universal-basic-income. (3,700 words.)

And:

Zohna Everett choked up as she described the immediate impact the payments had on her life. She quit driving for DoorDash, which gave her the time to find a job as a factory worker at Tesla’s plant in Fremont, 60 miles from Stockton. She was able to escape a dysfunctional marriage and move into her own home. “For me, it was a steppingstone. It got me to where I was okay by myself,” she says. “It was right on time. Everything in me was just like, ‘Oh, thank you so much, Lord.’”

…A mountain of evidence shows how tightly income inequality correlates with crime rates, education levels, drug abuse, incarceration, intimate-partner violence, and physical and mental health, which together cost billions upon billions of tax dollars.

October 2022: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tested Repeatedly. It Works. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/24/universal-basic-income/. (5,900 words, long but very good.)