Science 2.0

Blood pressure is a risk factor for a heart event and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) are common prescriptions.

Both types of medicines work on the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, a group of related hormones that act together to regulate blood pressure. ACE inhibitors lower blood pressure by blocking an enzyme early in the system so that less angiotensin, a chemical that narrows blood vessels, is produced, and blood vessels can remain wider and more relaxed. ARBs block receptors in the blood vessels that angiotensin attaches to, diminishing its vessel-constricting effect. 

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"Shark Week" is a Discovery Channel event each summer, unsurprisingly about sharks. It came into existence because "Jaws" the book and then the film were huge hits and they never left the public consciousness after that.

Now Shark Week is much the same, a part of the cultural lexicon. They used to market it, one year they even killed me off in a shark attack as part of their promotional stunt, but now I bet they don't have to do much at all. Yet when you grow to be important, you are going to those who want to bring you down a little. Big tree fall hard, as the saying goes.

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A recent blood group analysis of three Neanderthals and one Denisovan confirm their African origin, Eurasian dispersal, and interbreeding with early Homo sapiens. Intriguingly, it also added evidence of low genetic diversity and possible demographic fragility.

Neanderthals and Denisovans are extinct hominin lineages but were present throughout Eurasia from 300,000 to 40,000 years ago. This paper isn't the first time they have been sequenced but using the genes underlying blood groups in previously sequenced genomes of one Denisovan and three Neanderthal females who lived 100,000 to 40,000 years ago allowed scholars to identify their blood groups.

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A short while ago a prominent physicist made the offhand claim that bees were dying because of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids - seed treatments that protect plants from pests at their most vulnerable stage and result in far less chemical use than mass spraying. It's not true, and bees are not dying off anywhere, but that claim was still made by environmental fundraising brochures and lawyers hoping to sue so it's no surprise Mother Jones readers believe it.

But a scientist?  That should be odd. Yet it isn't.

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A just completed clinical trial of K.Vita (Betashot), a dietary treatment for children and adults with severe forms of epilepsy, found it was well tolerated and reduced seizures.

The product was developed to offset the risks of the ketogenic diet, which mimics a fasting state by altering the metabolism to use body fat as the primary fuel source. Ketosis is when the body switches from carbohydrates to fat for body fuel.

It has shown some success with drug-resistant epilepsies but the restrictive high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet can cause constipation, low blood sugar, and stomach problems. 

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Getting a Nobel Prize in science can be tough.(1) You have to do good work and be a little lucky, but here is a way to win one guaranteed.

You just need to go to Nate D. Sanders Auctions on July 29, 2021 and be the high bidder for the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to George D. Snell.

Organ transplants began in 1954 with a kidney and by 1968 doctors could do hearts, but there was a high compatibility risk - a strong genetic match was needed. Dr. Snell's work on Human Leukocyte Antigen, the genetic foundation of a body's immunological response to tissue and organ transplants which determines whether it accepts an organ or rejects it, became foundational in transplantation immunology.

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Americans are inherently skeptical, and American adults lead the world in science literacy, so those two things combine to show up in debates about climate change and other sciences.  

When you are literate and skeptical it is easy to know just enough to be wrong, when it comes to climate or nuclear energy, vaccines, and agriculture. The difference between the first one and the latter three is the political demographic that is skeptical about them. Politics infects everything.

That is why the each side paints issues they embrace in black and white; you can't be skeptical, you either accept what they accept or you are a denier.

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If your checklist for quality cinema contains:

(1) The Pope having his own black ops team that hunts demons and

(2) Scientists who study demonic possession and

(3) VR that becomes R

you are in luck, because the trailer for "Demonic," directed by Neill Blomkamp, just dropped.

So that girl from "Perfect" is all grown up and has a mom who went on a homicidal rampage and for no reason that really matter, scientists have spent a fortune to send Carly Pope in VR form to ask her mom's brain why she went on a homicidal rampage. 

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A study by the Silent Spring Institute(1), with funding from the politically sympathetic National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences during the days of organic industry keynote speaker and Ramazzini Institute member Linda Birnbaum, claims that hundreds of chemicals are endocrine disruptors.

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I’m puzzled as to why the planets, stars and moons are all round (when) other large and small objects such as asteroids and meteorites are irregular shapes?

— Lionel Young, age 74, Launceston, Tasmania

This is a fantastic question Lionel, and a really good observation!

When we look out at the Solar System, we see objects of all sizes — from tiny grains of dust, to giant planets and the Sun. A common theme among those objects is the big ones are (more or less) round, while the small ones are irregular. But why?

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San Francisco is worried that highway 37 may be in danger of flooding. They invoke environmental justice, of course, but it's really about rich people going to their second homes in Napa's wine country on weekends. Rich people need peasants toiling to feel elite and without roads they can't get there.

Yet if San Francisco journalists and editors are concerned about rising water, why are they continuing to support dumping the water that poor people need into the Bay? It clearly does not need more water. Poor people who can't afford to live in Napa do.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, wealthier people had the money to stay home and order online. Not so for poor people, who instead made more trips to local dollar stores and small groceries to get their family's food.

Why is that bad? It isn't at face value, supporting local businesses is an aspirational claim for many, but a group of academics claim that without equal incomes and equal access to buying in bulk, poor people were worse off when it comes to making healthy food choices. That is like arguing muffin in a local bodega is bad while a muffin in a Whole Foods is good, when experts know the Whole Foods version has far more calories. 

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With the delta variant of Covid-19 surging in many countries - e.g., over 100,000 new cases per day foreseen in the UK in the next few days, and many other countries following suit - we may feel depressed at the thought that this pandemic is going to stay with us for a lot longer than some originally foresaw.
In truth, if you could sort out your sources well, you would have predicted this a long time ago: epidemiologists had in fact foreseen that there would continue to be waves of contagions, although at some point mitigated by the vaccination campaigns. However, so much misinformation and falsehood on the topic has been since dumped on all media, and in particular on the internet, that it is easy to pick up wrong information.

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Experts hold international COVID summit on UK’s “Freedom day” - no public health officer would recognize this as a strategy

Response to the UK’s decision from around the world. I summarize their main points. To find out more click the link to the video below the image of the speaker.

They say no public health officer would recognize this as a strategy. Will finish notes on the rest later today.

Professor Shu Ti Chui of Taiwan explained with a metaphor of a raincoat and umbrella in heavy rain

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Ivermectin, effective against pests like worms and headlice, has been promoted by some as a COVID-19 therapy after a preprint showing its effectiveness was published in November on the Research Square website.

We were certainly not immune to the public relations full-court press. Until last month a week didn't go by when someone was demanding the regulatory equivalent of 'teach the controversy' no differently than activists opposed to GMOs, nuclear energy, and vaccines do. 

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An unknown methane-producing process is likely at work in the hidden ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn's moon Enceladus, suggests a new study published in Nature Astronomy by scientists at the University of Arizona and Paris Sciences&Lettres University.

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There is a belief that Airbnb listings cause increased crime in residential neighborhoods - or at least annoying late-night parties which increase risk of crimes. However, a new paper suggests that while Airbnb listings can be linked to a reduction in the local social dynamics that prevent crime, it isn't the tourists committing the crimes. And it takes years, which means Airbnb listings may be a symptom rather than the cause.

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A new paper has statistically linked inflammatory bowel disease, an umbrella term for chronic inflammation of the digestive tract, to processed foods. But because every food is processed - no one eats wheat that hasn't been milled - the term has now become "ultra-processed."

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On July 15 971, the bones of St Swithin were removed from their resting place on the order of Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, and placed in a shrine inside the cathedral. The saint, it seemed, did not approve. A violent storm followed, and rain fell for 40 days. And from that story came the belief that the weather on July 15 predicted a summer of sun or rain.

St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain’
For forty days it will remain;
St Swithin’s day if thou be fair,
For forty days will rain na mair.

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It is no secret in science media that The Conversation is overtly political, any more than it's a shock that ProPublica or Mother Jones is. If you are going to get hired in most corporate media - and there are all corporations even if they are Non-Profit Corporations - in 2021 you are first going to have liberal credibility.

An acquaintance of mine even had a job offer as an editor at The Conversation pulled a few years ago because another staffer sounded the alarm that he might be *gasp* a fiscal conservative.

When you make hiring decisions based on whether or not someone thinks poor people should pay lower taxes, you are really, really political.

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