Science!

[Edward64]

Hah. I blank on names but I've never been good with names.

However, there are times when I struggle to find the right word. I know there's this word I'm looking for but can't remember. I google to find it. I don't have Alzheimer's in my family tree that I know of.

Let us know your diet. I just take my daily vitamin pill which I've been doing since Covid. It has 90% vitamin E which I've read may help.

[Castlerock]

Originally Posted by Kodos

That sounds promising. My Mom died of Alzheimer's, so that disease is of particular concern to me. I get nervous whenever my memory fails me or I blank on somebody's name. I'm doing what I can to prevent further memory loss by staying fit and eating right. I don't fear death so much as I fear a long, lingering, painful death that makes me and my loved ones suffer at length.

My dad died of Alzheimer's. It is so, so, so much worse then what you think you know about Alzheimer's if you have not seen this disease first-hand. 3 out of 4 of my dad's siblings also had/have it. I am terrified of this disease.

[Kodos]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Hah. I blank on names but I've never been good with names.

However, there are times when I struggle to find the right word. I know there's this word I'm looking for but can't remember. I google to find it. I don't have Alzheimer's in my family tree that I know of.

Let us know your diet. I just take my daily vitamin pill which I've been doing since Covid. It has 90% vitamin E which I've read may help.

Yeah, I've long been terrible with names. And I frequently substitute a similar word to the one I was looking for in conversation. I call it the right folder, wrong file problem.

As far as my diet goes, a lot of that is detailed in the Forks over Knives thread. I gave up eating meat somewhere around a decade ago. I also gave up soda around that time, and started exercising (running). I follow a whole-food, plant-based diet now, although I still allow treats like pretzels and chocolate bars. I try to limit dairy. For the most part, I only drink green tea or water. I almost never drink alcohol anymore, and was never a heavy drinker. I'm 5'10", and weigh around 203 - 205 these days. I'm broad through the shoulders, so that sounds worse than it is BMI-wise. I'm trim in most places, but have a bit of a gut.

These days, I ride the Peloton 2-4 times a week, and lift weights 2 times a week as well (that's something I added in 3 or 4 months ago).

[sterlingice]

Lilly has been working hard on Alzheimers for more than a decade with a lot of failures (not because they're bad at what they do but because curing diseases is hard) and it's good to see it might be paying huge dividends for people.


SI

[Edward64]

This is kinda cool but scary also if one speculates what else could be done in the future. But does seem to be a legit medical need.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65538866

A baby has been born using three people's DNA for the first time in the UK, the fertility regulator has confirmed.

Most of their DNA comes from their two parents and around 0.1% from a third, donor woman.

The pioneering technique is an attempt to prevent children being born with devastating mitochondrial diseases.

Fewer than five such babies have been born, but no further details have been released.

Is it possible to create a baby that does have traits of a "third parent"? If so, can there be traits of a 4th, 5th etc. parent.

This donor DNA is only relevant for making effective mitochondria, does not affect other traits such as appearance and does not constitute a "third parent".

[Edward64]

If true, they should do something about the authors ... a perpetual wall of shame or something.

Science | AAAS

When neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel put his new fake-paper detector to work, he was “shocked” by what it found. After screening some 5000 papers, he estimates up to 34% of neuroscience papers published in 2020 were likely made up or plagiarized; in medicine, the figure was 24%. Both numbers, which he and colleagues report in a medRxiv preprint posted on 8 May, are well above levels they calculated for 2010—and far larger than the 2% baseline estimated in a 2022 publishers’ group report.

I guess they are dealing with the equivalent of ChatGPT for HS & College kids.

To fight back, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM), representing 120 publishers, is leading an effort called the Integrity Hub to develop new tools. STM is not revealing much about the detection methods, to avoid tipping off paper mills. “There is a bit of an arms race,” says Joris van Rossum, the Integrity Hub’s product director. He did say one reliable sign of a fake is referencing many retracted papers; another involves manuscripts and reviews emailed from internet addresses crafted to look like those of legitimate institutions.

Twenty publishers—including the largest, such as Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley—are helping develop the Integrity Hub tools, and 10 of the publishers are expected to use a paper mill detector the group unveiled in April. STM also expects to pilot a separate tool this year that detects manuscripts simultaneously sent to more than one journal, a practice considered unethical and a sign they may have come from paper mills. Such large-scale cooperation is meant to improve on what publishers were doing individually and to share tools across the publishing industry, van Rossum says.

[Solecismic]

Originally Posted by Edward64

If true, they should do something about the authors ... a perpetual wall of shame or something.

I guess they are dealing with the equivalent of ChatGPT for HS & College kids.

How would that work? Wouldn't a wall of shame end up being more political than anything else?

There's a seismic shift going on in academia. Think of it as the last tenable remains of publish-or-perish. A multitude of journals that exist solely to support the system. A peer review process that no longer provides rigorous review - the "reviewers" rarely know much about what they're rubber-stamping, especially with the newer journals.

In the meantime, we've all read about the logarithmic increase in the number of college administrators who don't even deal with students or professors any more. It's its own industry, and produces nothing.

Because college attendance numbers are down, the competition for new professor jobs is enormous. In order to get in the door, you need citations and publications. So a lot of this is giant circles of citation/publication of garbage.

You see papers with one lead author and as many co-authors as possible, young people with enormous numbers. Papers that barely even seem literate, let alone advance science. An increasing percentage of papers that summarize other papers rather than attempt new research. Research narrowly tailored to generate grant money, which means pushing the right buttons for whatever the government wants to support right now.

It's been interesting seeing my wife go through this, as her research is qualitative rather than quantitative and so it doesn't work the same way. Her sabbatical is about to start and so she's trying to put together a schedule for research as this year will define the projects that will make up her eventual case for promotion to full professor down the road (she was recently promoted to associate, along with getting tenure). It's stressful, but she's hoping to create meaningful work.

I feel bad for the younger people in the sciences - it's just not a good place right now and it looks like it's going to get worse rather than better. I think we'll start seeing universities closing in the next few years.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

How would that work? Wouldn't a wall of shame end up being more political than anything else?

I wouldn't think so? If you plagiarize or if your submission has been found to be fraudulent, then get called out. Plagiarism should be "relatively" easier to identify as there are software nowadays. Pure out fraud (e.g. faking data, results) is definitely harder. But if either are backed up by black-and-white facts, don't see why it would be political.

I feel bad for the younger people in the sciences - it's just not a good place right now and it looks like it's going to get worse rather than better. I think we'll start seeing universities closing in the next few years.

I do think paper mill schools or those with < x% graduation (over multiple years) deserve to be closed and/or forced to do better.


BTW - good luck to your wife!

[Kodos]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/s...smid=url-share

A ‘Soda Ocean’ on a Moon of Saturn Has All the Ingredients for Life

Enceladus — the sixth-largest of Saturn’s 146 moons — has a liquid ocean with a rocky floor under its bright, white and frosty surface. Ice volcanoes spew frozen grains of material into space, generating one of the many rings circling the planet.

Now, a team of researchers has discovered that those icy grains contain phosphates. They found them using data from Cassini, a joint NASA-European orbiter that concluded its study of Saturn, its rings and moons in 2017. It is the first time phosphorus has been found in an ocean beyond Earth. The results, which add to the prospect that Enceladus is home to extraterrestrial life, were published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“We weren’t expecting this. We didn’t look for it,” said Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University of Berlin who led the study. He described the realization that they had found phosphates (chemicals containing the element phosphorus) as a “tantalizing moment.”

With the discovery of phosphorus on the ocean world, scientists say they have now found all of the elements there that are essential to life as we know it. Phosphorus is a key ingredient in human bones and teeth, and scientists say it is the rarest bio-essential ingredient in the cosmos. Planetary researchers had previously detected the other five key elements on Enceladus: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur (the last of which has been tentatively detected).

Earlier research indicated that phosphorus should be scarce on extraterrestrial ocean worlds, which could hold back life from forming elsewhere in the solar system or galaxy.

But on Enceladus, the researchers found the “exact opposite,” Dr. Postberg said. Rather than having a lack of phosphates, he said, its icy sea was “enriched compared to Earth’s oceans by a factor of 1,000 or so.”

Dr. Postberg and his colleagues reached this conclusion by performing an in-depth survey of 345 ice grains that Cassini studied as it flew through Saturn’s “E-ring,” which is formed by Enceladus’s emissions. They measured the composition of dust puffs arising from the collisions of these grains with the metal plate of an instrument on the spacecraft, the Cosmic Dust Analyzer. Nine of the icy particles, they found, had molecular masses that hinted at the presence of phosphates.

[Edward64]

You'd think we would have industrialized the building & sending of planetary probes/rovers by now. Not the seemingly once every 3-5+ years but like twice a year.

A liquid ocean, how hard can it be to splash (?) down and deploy the fishnets?

Article below quotes $. For the recent Mars missions, about $2.9-$3.2B. Doesn't sound cost prohibitive. And if NASA can't do it ASAP, bid it out to SpaceX and like.

How expensive is the NASA Mars rover Perseverance mission? | World Economic Forum



A confirmed alien single cell organism before I die. Is that too much to ask?

[Edward64]

Interesting research, probably too late for me but glad there's hope for the kids.

On subject of use of monkeys/mice etc. in medical research. Yes, it's cruel but don't see an alternative. Many times, I'd guess there are ways to make the testing less cruel (and treatment of animals better). But for cosmetics and other not-as-important stuff, I'm for stopping. When its to help the human race in things like this, animal testing seems very necessary.

One Shot of a Kidney Protein Gave Monkeys a Brain Boost | WIRED

An early experiment in older rhesus macaques suggests that an injection of klotho improves working memory. Could it one day help people?
:
Klotho improved their performance on the easier task by about 6 percent, and on the harder version by about 20 percent, Dubal says.

“This is very encouraging,” says Moe, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

The researchers had the monkeys do the task several times over the course of two weeks, and the team saw that even though klotho gets broken down by the body within a couple days of injection, the cognitive-enhancing effect lasted the entire time

In fact, in previous studies with mice, both low and high doses of klotho boosted cognition, helping them perform better in several maze tasks that challenge learning and memory. But when Dubal’s team gave monkeys doses of 10, 20, and 30 micrograms per kilogram of body weight, the benefits plateaued at the 10-microgram dose. This raises an important flag for researchers, as they consider someday testing klotho injections in humans. When it comes to dosing, Verdin says, “More is not always better.”

[Brian Swartz]

On the rover thing, it would be far more expensive to get one to Saturn. Finding life is just one of many goals, accelerate the rovers and you have to decelerate something else for the money cost, it's not always beneficial to 'just send more' because a lot of time it's done in a sequence. I.e. one rover tries a specific area and discovers various things, then you design the next rover and it's mission based on those discoveries. This is another reason not to mass-produce them, because each one is tailored to it's mission. And of course it's a lot more complicated and expensive based on the position of the planets at any given time, yada yada yada.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

On the rover thing, it would be far more expensive to get one to Saturn. Finding life is just one of many goals, accelerate the rovers and you have to decelerate something else for the money cost, it's not always beneficial to 'just send more' because a lot of time it's done in a sequence. I.e. one rover tries a specific area and discovers various things, then you design the next rover and it's mission based on those discoveries. This is another reason not to mass-produce them, because each one is tailored to it's mission. And of course it's a lot more complicated and expensive based on the position of the planets at any given time, yada yada yada.

But I can do it so easy in Kerbal Space Program?

[Edward64]

Holy Frak.

I'm excited about this technology/technique, but also scared of the unintended consequences.

Scientists Resurrected an Extinct Animal Frozen for 46,000 Years in Siberia

Scientists have revived tiny animals called nematodes from a slumber that lasted 46,000 years, reports a new study.

The microscopic animals were successfully woken from a state of suspended animation after researchers found them in the permafrost, or frozen soil, that flanks Siberia’s northern Kolyma River. A radiocarbon analysis revealed that they hail from a prehistoric era when Neanderthals and dire wolves still roamed the world, and that they belong to a functionally extinct species called Panagrolaimus kolymaensis that was previously unknown to science.

[NobodyHere]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

But I can do it so easy in Kerbal Space Program?

You found it easy?

[Brian Swartz]

I missed that the first time, but my follow-up would be: vanilla KSP or RP-0?

[MJ4H]

Feels wrong without this:

CT and Jivin - X-files Science Sound - YouTube

[Edward64]

Can't appreciate the implications if true/validated, but there's a lot of buzz right now and a rush to confirm.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...cda_story.html

LK-99 is either a once-in-a-generation scientific breakthrough, or a huge disappointment. Right now, peers and armchair experts aren’t quite sure which, and the race is on to find out. The buzz shows how desperate we are for a technological discovery that could change the world.

Named after two scientists, Lee and Kim, and the year of its discovery — 1999 — LK-99 is a compound made from lead and copper. According to a paper released last month, the South Korean team have created a groundbreaking new material. A second article claims that LK-99 shows “levitation at room temperature.”

“For the first time in the world, we succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure,” they wrote. The scientific world is abuzz.

The important concept ...

... the holy grail of materials science is to find a superconductor that persists in normal temperatures without the need to operate in some kind of pressure chamber. LK-99, if it’s the real deal, could be the substance that revolutionizes industries including electronics, energy, and transport. It could pave the way for quantum computing to become a practical reality instead of a laboratory experiment.

[GrantDawg]

....or it will destroy the universe.

[albionmoonlight]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/scien...lk99-evidence/

Disappointing. Though it was what a lot of scientists expected.

That's how science works (when the politics can stay out of it). Try to replicate the results. Learn something from the attempt. Try again with your new knowledge.

[Edward64]

It is disappointing. But the original authors are pushing back ... so still a little more to play out

Now the claim is rapidly deflating under scientific study. Over the last few days, papers from academic labs scattered across the globe have built up evidence that the material, dubbed LK-99, is not a superconductor and is more likely a type of magnet. (Hyun-Tak Kim, a co-author of one of the discovery papers and a physicist at William & Mary, countered in an email that other research groups’ failure to replicate their results are probably because they lack “know how” in developing the sample the same way.)

[Edward64]

Pretty cool ... good to know there are others in the family tree ... albeit distant-distant-distant "cousins".

300,000-year-old skull found in China unlike any early human seen before | CNN

An ancient skull dating back 300,000 years is unlike any other premodern human fossil ever found, potentially pointing to a new branch in the human family tree, according to new research.
:
Published in the Journal of Human Evolution on July 31, a study by the research team found that the mandible, known as HLD 6, is “unexpected” and does not fit into any existing taxonomic groups.

By comparing the HLD 6 mandible to those of Pleistocene hominins and modern humans, the researchers found it has features of both.

It is similarly shaped to the mandible of Homo sapiens, our modern human species that evolved from Homo erectus. But it also shares a characteristic of a different branch that evolved from Homo erectus, the Denisovans. Like the Denisovans, HLD 6 does not appear to have a chin.

Anyone here have a weak or no chin?

[Thomkal]

aliens I tell you, aliens

[Edward64]

This is really, really cool. Brain controlling speech (limited vocabulary) through an avatar.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna101420

Now, in a scientific milestone 18 years after Johnson's stroke, an experimental technology has translated her brain signals into audible words, enabling her to communicate through a digital avatar.
:
The computers use artificial intelligence algorithms to translate the brain signals into sentences that get spoken through a digitally animated figure. So when Johnson tried to say a sentence like “Great to see you again,” the avatar on a nearby screen uttered those words out loud.

I wonder how good it can get.

The technology converted Johnson's speech attempts into words at nearly 80 words per minute. Chang said the natural rate of speech is around 150 to 200. It had a median accuracy of around 75% when Johnson used a 1,024-word vocabulary.

For context, I found this

The average third grader knows something like 15,000 words. The average sixth grade student knows something like 25,000 words. The average high school graduate knows something like 50,000 words.

[Edward64]

Disappointed. I looked at the moon tonight and it was not blue.

[Edward64]

Dayquil doesn't work?

I knew that when they changed for mix for sudafed, it didn't seem to work for me. But I felt Dayquil did help relieve my symptoms (and Nyquil did put me to sleep).

Apparently, this has been suspected since 2007. I wonder what took so long to finally determine this (but I'll guess Big Pharma slowed things down).

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSt...erts-103120743

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on Tuesday against the effectiveness of the ingredient found in popular versions of Sudafed, Allegra, Dayquil and other medications stocked on store shelves.

“Modern studies, when well conducted, are not showing any improvement in congestion with phenylephrine,” said Dr. Mark Dykewicz, an allergy specialist at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.
:
This time, the 16 members of the FDA panel unanimously agreed that current evidence doesn't show a benefit for the drug.

[Edward64]

Interesting, never would have thought.

https://www.iflscience.com/coin-toss...d-theory-71047

Coin Tosses Are Not 50/50: Scientists Toss 350,757 Coins And Prove Old Theory

It seems fair. You'd assume that as coins have two sides and you introduce a random element (flipping the coin and catching it), the odds of it coming up with your pick is 50/50 (or one in two). But researchers have crunched the numbers, looking at an impressive 350,757 coin tosses, and found that coin tosses are not 50/50 after all. You can tip the odds ever so slightly in your favor.

The new team recruited 48 people to flip 350,757 coins from 46 different currencies, finding that overall, there was a 50.8 percent chance of the coin showing up the same side it was tossed from.

[Edward64]

Amazing news (if it holds up with peer reviews, side effects etc). It’s been a long 40+ years.

Now if we can only do the same with cancer.

Experts say a twice-yearly injection that offers 100% protection against HIV is 'stunning' | AP News

Twice-yearly shots used to treat AIDS were 100% effective in preventing new infections in women, according to study results published Wednesday.

There were no infections in the young women and girls that got the shots in a study of about 5,000 in South Africa and Uganda, researchers reported. In a group given daily prevention pills, roughly 2% ended up catching HIV from infected sex partners.

“To see this level of protection is stunning,” said Salim Abdool Karim of the injections. He is director of an AIDS research center in Durban, South Africa, who was not part of the research.

The shots made by U.S. drugmaker Gilead and sold as Sunlenca are approved in the U.S., Canada, Europe and elsewhere, but only as a treatment for HIV. The company said it is waiting for results of testing in men before seeking permission to use it to protect against infection.

[whomario]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Now if we can only do the same with cancer.

Now if we can only make it affordable for the average patient. This will be severely underutilised at the prices circulating.

[Edward64]

Amazing news (if it holds up with peer reviews, side effects etc). It’s been a long 40+ years.

Now if we can only do the same with cancer.

Experts say a twice-yearly injection that offers 100% protection against HIV is 'stunning' | AP News

Twice-yearly shots used to treat AIDS were 100% effective in preventing new infections in women, according to study results published Wednesday.

There were no infections in the young women and girls that got the shots in a study of about 5,000 in South Africa and Uganda, researchers reported. In a group given daily prevention pills, roughly 2% ended up catching HIV from infected sex partners.

“To see this level of protection is stunning,” said Salim Abdool Karim of the injections. He is director of an AIDS research center in Durban, South Africa, who was not part of the research.

The shots made by U.S. drugmaker Gilead and sold as Sunlenca are approved in the U.S., Canada, Europe and elsewhere, but only as a treatment for HIV. The company said it is waiting for results of testing in men before seeking permission to use it to protect against infection.