== Advances in medicine and health ==
The U.K. may start offering full genome sequencing to every child born in the country. “While the tests could theoretically improve medical treatment, it also raises a slew of questions about medical privacy, consent, and the future of the human race.” Yes, like most new technologies, it could either empower Big Brothers or else... if shared openly and accountably and transparently they could prevent Orwellian nightmares forever.
Researchers claim to have 3D-printed skin that’s alive and has blood vessels. Skin is the biggest “organ” of the body and this can be of huge importance to burn victims and others. Auto-immune matching is the most crucial aspect for making it work.
Weird! “After bone marrow transplant, a man’s semen contains only donor’s DNA.” Dang. Better hope the fellow who donated and saved your life isn’t also a sexual predator. Notify that CSI show! (via Futurist.com)
Researchers claim to have 3D-printed skin that’s alive and has blood vessels. Skin is the biggest “organ” of the body and this can be of huge importance to burn victims and others. Auto-immune matching is the most crucial aspect for making it work.
Weird! “After bone marrow transplant, a man’s semen contains only donor’s DNA.” Dang. Better hope the fellow who donated and saved your life isn’t also a sexual predator. Notify that CSI show! (via Futurist.com)
Only this is why we need a civilization filled with bright skeptics. Because there turns out to be more to this story… There are no sperm cells because the individual had a vasectomy. DNA is from white blood cells or blood cell fragments in the semen. Boy, talk about an object lesson for us all.
Psychiatric disorders affect 25 percent of the population in any given year. A new study has identified more than a hundred gene variants that can affect a person’s risk of developing multiple psychiatric disorders — a biological clue that could lead to more effective treatments for the disorders in the future.
Researchers fed a machine learning system 1.77 million electrocardiogram (ECG) logs — measured in voltage over time — from 400,000 patients, in order to detect patterns that could indicate future cardiac problems including heart attacks and atrial fibrillation. The AI model distinguished between patients who would die within a year and those who survived. Um… duh? Discovering correlations in vast data sets is what computers do really well. Using good judgment about those correlations, especially when the datasets might contain biases (e.g. racial) is something that smart humans and wise societies must view as a good thing, helping us target those undercurrents. And so far, boy have the activists been on top of this.
And the company selling rich people blood transfusions from young folks is back. Now? A scientifically dubious and likely harmless mutually beneficial business deal. Later? When these Rhino-horn-using, struldbrug-vampires start demanding fresh young blood daily? You’ve seen it in science fiction. Undermine this failure mode with good science!
Wearable medical devices today can monitor heart rate, blood oxygen, and physical activity. New laser-engraved microfluidic sensors can detect minute concentrations of molecules in perspiration, like a wearable sensor that can measure the levels of uric acid and tyrosine in sweat. “Tyrosine can be an indicator of metabolic disorders, liver disease, eating disorders, and neuropsychiatric conditions.” (via IFTF)
Aaaand… we compost vaggie waste, but human bodies? The future “using one-eighth of the energy of cremation and saving as much as a metric ton of carbon dioxide, it can convert a body into a cubic yard of nutrient-rich soil in a month.” Um, I recycle/compost a lot of our veggie scraps. But this... I hope to keep it an abstract consideration for decades, yet.
== More from the Medical world ==
The CRISPR technique uses molecular scissors for genes, revolutionizing scientific research by letting scientists alter DNA. But a new gene editing system may prove even more powerful.
We’ve officially annihilated a second strain of polio. Only one remains. “Currently, WPV1 only circulates in two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan. But vaccination efforts to stop it are plagued by vaccine misinformation and harmful rumors, armed conflicts and insecurity, and fears and misinformation about vaccine-derived polio infections, which are rare but a considerable threat.”
We’ve officially annihilated a second strain of polio. Only one remains. “Currently, WPV1 only circulates in two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan. But vaccination efforts to stop it are plagued by vaccine misinformation and harmful rumors, armed conflicts and insecurity, and fears and misinformation about vaccine-derived polio infections, which are rare but a considerable threat.”
A vaccine which could revolutionize tuberculosis treatment might provide long-term protection against the disease, which kills 1.5 million people around the world each year. One of the huge baddies still out there.
Thanks Vaxxers! The notoriously contagious measles virus not only makes people sick, it also sneaks inside important immune cells in the body and wipes their "memories," new research suggests. Once infected, the amnesic immune system no longer recognizes the harmful pathogens that it has fought off in the past. In fact, docs just proved what’s long been suspected: “When they started using the vaccine they noticed a drop in deaths from other diseases at the same time. This happened in every country the vaccine was adopted. The first theory was that the Measles vaccine protected people from other diseases, but there was no way it could do that. Research showed that it didn't do that. It took years to figure out that not getting Measles is what protected people.”
Getting science fictional with a quirky side thought though… If measles zeroes out some immune cell memories… might it be useful developing therapies for allergies of autoimmune diseases? Should measles vaccination be delayed until you know your child does not have allergies or an auto-immune ailment? If so, might the actual disease be therapeutic, resetting the immune system?
== Convergence ==
Aliens among us. Scientists have found microbes that live on sulfate more than 1.5 kilometers beneath Earth’s surface in water that has been trapped in fractures in the rock for hundreds of millions of years.
Deadly Brain Cancers Act Like 'Vampires' By Hijacking Normal Cells To Grow.” All of it consistent with my own theory, in my short story “Chrysalis,” That one biologist said: “This is what you’ll be remembered for, a century from now, Brin.” Huh. I kinda hope not? Anyway the story is in Insistence of Vision.
Getting weirder still, the ctenophore a small sea organism, has a relatively advanced nervous system, but different from any other animal – using ‘a different chemical language’, lacking the neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine and nitric oxide, and many other chemical messengers considered the universal neural language of all animals. Has it invented neurons, muscles and other specialized tissues, independently from the rest of the animal kingdom?
Researchers find also “that the neural circuits underlying smell, episodic memory, spatial navigation, behavior choice and vision in insects are nearly identical to those performing the same functions in mammals – despite the fact that different, though overlapping, sets of genes were harnessed to build each one… the suggested answer is convergence: these far-flung branches of the evolutionary tree arrived at common designs for a nervous system because they each had to solve the same fundamental problems.”
My friend Simon Conway Morris, a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge, has stressed the importance of evolutionary convergence: that evolution tends to arrive at the same solutions over and over again, even in distant branches of the animal tree, and even when the proteins or genes used to build a similar structure are not themselves related.
And weirder still? That ‘blob” organism that’s neither plant nor animal that has slime mold features but… 700 sexes?
== ... and miscellany ==
660 2” cubes of refined – but not isotope separated – metallic uranium were recovered from the primitive Nazi atomic program near the end of WWII. This fascinating article tells of maybe 5 cubes known today. The rest? Not exactly dangerous, as they were. Probably got sent to a refinery to become way more dangerous.
Humans making icebergs in order to refreeze the Arctic? Um clever method, but harder than planting trees.
Carlsberg is working on beer bottles made of paper.
Satellite images can be used to detect stranded whales — a potential new way to identify strandings in real-time.
== It's a virus... ==
I could link you to my Hugo nominated story about the ultimate in "commensal" viral parasitism -- "The Giving Plague," in my collection OTHERNESS... or my more recent story "Chrysalis," with an unusual take on both infection and cancer, as well as a secret part of the human genome (in INSISTENCE OF VISION). Heck I could go into many reasons to stay calm in the face of coronavirus... and one or two reasons not to...
But instead, let me offer a different sort of wisdom, from a December 1979 NPR show called "Unpacking the 80s"... a little song that stuck in my head, ever since.
Back in the Pleistocene
When we were still marine
A virus launched a quest
to be the perfect guest
and re-arranged our genes.
It's a virus, it inspired us
to rise above the mud.
It's a virus, it's desirous
of your very flesh and blood.
Now I know your body's burnin,
but don't give up the ghost!
Tiny viruses are turning you
into the perfect... host.
== It's a virus... ==
I could link you to my Hugo nominated story about the ultimate in "commensal" viral parasitism -- "The Giving Plague," in my collection OTHERNESS... or my more recent story "Chrysalis," with an unusual take on both infection and cancer, as well as a secret part of the human genome (in INSISTENCE OF VISION). Heck I could go into many reasons to stay calm in the face of coronavirus... and one or two reasons not to...
But instead, let me offer a different sort of wisdom, from a December 1979 NPR show called "Unpacking the 80s"... a little song that stuck in my head, ever since.
Back in the Pleistocene
When we were still marine
A virus launched a quest
to be the perfect guest
and re-arranged our genes.
It's a virus, it inspired us
to rise above the mud.
It's a virus, it's desirous
of your very flesh and blood.
Now I know your body's burnin,
but don't give up the ghost!
Tiny viruses are turning you
into the perfect... host.