Five Covid items you don't (yet) know... plus Bat viruses and Wuhan collaborations and recent science updates

As the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates, infectious diseases can have profound influences on their host populations. Human evolution has unquestionably been shaped by past infections. However, humans have also shaped pathogen dynamics and virulence via a multitude of factors, like settlement, agriculture, technology, rapid long-distance travel, medicine, and global economic integration, continue to shape epidemics and the human host populations. The most recent CARTA virtual symposium explored how infectious agents and humans shape each other’s evolutionary trajectories. The IMPACT OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE ON HUMANS & OUR ORIGINS. 

== Covid (covfefe?) insights ==
(1) Word has been issued that we need worry less about "fomites" or physical objects and surfaces carrying infectious viruses. Many of you first saw the word "fomite" in my novel Existence which dealt with an unusual (speculative) kind of interstellar virus, and the unusual "surface" that carried it.   

(2) Also spreading is a fact we should have known months ago, had there been pervasive testing - that exposure in outdoor air, especially in sunshine, is much less dangerous than in enclosed spaces and over extended periods. Good to know, but still no guarantee. Keep washing.

(3) You'll hear that it takes a 'minimum dose" of virus to get infected - at least a thousand or so - and that one or two won't do it. I doubt this! We need to recall that the dosage minimum thing is statistical. There are undoubtedly cases in which a single inhaled virus has led to disease and death, because if that one virus got very, very lucky, it will have hundreds of immediate replicant offspring. All right, I am glad researchers estimate a rapid falloff below say 1000, but it's not to zero. Now, having said that, what might happen is that a single point infection could trigger sufficient immune response to deal with the isolated site. One hopes.  

(4) Talk of a widely distributed vaccine by October is misinformation and dangerous. Yes, there are groups with tentatively promising vaccines! And Biden is right that this is a time for lots of international conversation, sharing and cooperation, bringing forward for testing the best ten or so from wherever... exactly opposite to the Trumpist idiocy. And yes, Biden and Gates are right that we should invest now in the factories to mass produce vaccines, when ready. But there is still reason to do the full test program on 100,000 subjects, rather than immediately 100 million.

Remember the 1976 Swine Flu? Gerald Ford's only dynamic presidential action was to rush out an untested vaccine - (for this he gets an aircraft carrier named for him?) - one which triggered a flush of Guillain-Barré syndrome... which spurred the start of our modern, insane-ingrate festival of anti-vax lunacy. We cannot afford a repeat on any large scale. 

Now consider this added flaw in a rushed vaccine. There is something called  Antibody-Based Enhancement... where some viruses take advantage of earlier exposures to related strains, by hijacking the very antibodies your body employed against the earlier strain and then using your own antibodies as penetration aids into your cells! It's why Dengue can sometimes be far more lethal the second time you get it and why Dengue vaccines are used only sparingly. Hence it isn't just the virus that must be visualized. The antibodies we're counting on should be checked to make sure they can't be turned into trojan horses! (The Nanome company makes spectacular molecule visualizing products letting you AR-dive into complex proteins.) And hence, while we can speed up and support science, and enlarge the studies rapidly, there still must be studies.

Get ready for the Covfefe Administration to announce spectacular vaccines (and brag that Two Scoops invented them, himself) before the election, as Sinclair Radio jocks veer from "it's a hoax!" to "we're the scientists saving you!" To which the answer must be "You first!" No seriously. In front of cameras, roll up your sleeves. You first.

(5) Perspective on the project to collect bat samples and study hundreds of species of corona virus, in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While our present troubles may still turn out to have spilled from a careless lab release, it’s worth noting that there are very good reasons for these data collection projects and collaboration - in careful ways has always been and always will be desirable.

(6) Oh, read about the incredible wave of GOP suck-ups ingratiating themselves with Trump by loudly declaring they are taking and touting hydroxy-Q… declaring “If it was bad, Democrats would WANT him to take it!” No, that’s your desperately hate-drenched psychology. It’s not how our - sane - minds work.

== Health: public and personal ==

How to quarantine in ways that will effectively limit transmission while helping the quarantined to experience comfort, not fear - so others will cooperate if their turn comes? And so the un-infected can be released quickly and so that economic disruption is minimized? See “Quarantine Methods Across the Ages.” The case of the cruise ship in Japan is horrific, maximizing both torment and chances of cross infection among the tightly packed passengers. Maybe, in addition to rush-building new hospitals, China should have erected quarantine centers that have the look and feel of resorts? Without expensive surfaces but with basic amenities - including hiking & frisbee golf (much easier to set up than regular golf), and easily divided into secure zones, as each quarantined person processes along one track or another.

Certainly the Japanese should have done this for those poor cruise ship passengers. Business travelers and vital industrial workers could be processed efficiently and with good optics.

And more...   Autism appears to be at least somewhat associated with alterations in the cells that provide the myelin coatings for nerve cells.

We all know we should exercise more. But this article lays out what science knows, as of this year... and it's pretty darn overwhelming. I used to joke that if exercise extends your life by exactly the amount of time you spend exercising, then isn't it a wash? (A joke I usually told in the locker room, while finally catching my breath.) But apparently you make a big profit on the deal, so that's one joke to retire.

America's most widely consumed oil causes genetic changes in the brain: Soybean oil linked to metabolic and neurological changes in mice. Soybean oil. Wean the fried foods habit. Sorry.

== That Can-Do Spirit... ==

A colleague called followers to write me “suggesting David Brin write a graphic novel, about responding to a crisis by folks working together to overcome problems, not sitting around and giving up because we don't make things in the USA any more.” 

In fact, I did that! TINKERERS, explored a wide range of reasons people offer for US industrial decline... 

…then how we'll fix it the old-fashioned way, recovering our talent for poking any problem — as individuals and small groups — innovating with ingenuity, agility and élan.  

It's available online! Not the best art. (Many images were  web downloads. Including Morgan Freeman? Peter Lorre? Seriously?) 

Still, I think you’ll have fun. And it’s cheap! (Free!) And the message is even more fitting for these times, as I and many others try to help "tinkerers" solve our currently critical medical supply shortages.

Here's the main page on my website. 

And did I mention the whole thing is FREE at:

http://www.davidbrin.com/fiction/tinkerers.pdf

And there’s a curriculum STUDY GUIDE, taking students through the historical and other references. Maybe ideal for a home schooling session?

Inventing Hari Seldon's psychohistory - and other science marvels

The Defense Department wants new computer tools to analyze mounds of unstructured text, blogs and tweets as part of a coordinated push to help military analysts predict the future and make decisions faster. The search is part of the Office of Naval Research's "Data to Decisions" program, a series of three-to-10-year initiatives that will address the volume of information that threatens to overwhelm planners in the digital age. The ONR is calling for computer algorithms to predict events, fuse different forms of information and offer context on unfolding events. The office expects to spend $500,000 each year in funding.

This is just one of many such endeavors currently underway, the most ambitious being a European Union plan devoting billions of Euros to developing predictive analytics that sound a lot like the "psychohistory" of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Universe and its genius prognosticator Hari Seldon.  (I know about such things: I entered Seldon's mind, in my novel set in Isaac's cosmos in my novel, FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH that tied up many loose ends in the Foundation universe.)

Alas, while better tools for appraisal and projection are desperately needed (I portray them in EXISTENCE), I also consider all these expensive European and American efforts to be premature and likely doomed.  

Instead, what would be far better is to lay the foundations by doing one simple thing -- performing a broad-spectrum survey in order to find out who - in human civilization - happens to be right a lot.

Can you believe that there has never been a systematic effort to do that one, simple thing?  Shine light on all the actuaries, horseracing touts, stock analysts, political pundits and so on who claim to have a handle on the future, with a clear and do-able aim - to appraise and score them, so that we can find out - at long last - who gets it right more often than others... perhaps anomalously often, far above chance? And in contrast, who is full of bull? Can you think of any appraisal... any at all... that could have more substantial positive effects on society and the world?  Or that would seem more terrifying to the "chattering castes"?

And so why do I push for it?  Guesses, anyone?

I discuss elsewhere the many advantages. As well as complications, e.g. that the very best prognosticators might not want scrutiny applied to their methods. Still, we'd all have a chance for a better society if the best were scored and revealed and their methods scrutinized. It would also cost 1% of the vast (and futile) modeling programs under proposal. Ah, but perhaps that is why my suggestion is never taken seriously.  See: Accountability for Everyday Prophets: A Call for a Predictions Registry. 

== How to keep growth going... ==

Is growth slowing?  Every decade since the 1940s featured some cluster of new technologies -- from jets to satellites to pharma and the internet -- that created a burst of new wealth and productivity. (Which incidentally helped Americans to pay for the tsunami of purchases that then propelled world development.) I've pointed out that most U.S. problems are rooted in one sad fact: there was no such "big new thing" in the 1st decade of the 21st Century.

That's partly the fault of troglodyte political leaders who ruled us then. But in a broader sense it provokes some to claim that the era of tech driven growth is over,  Paul Krugman replies in the NY Times that it's too soon to count technology out.  Still, even optimists should be concerned: while smart machines may make higher GDP possible, “they also reduce the demand for people — including smart people. So we could be looking at a society that grows ever richer, but in which all the gains in wealth accrue to whoever owns the robots.”

So, is the "maker movement" going to rescue American manufacturing independence... and civilization in general... as some  tech-utopians not predict? (And as I depict in my graphic novel TINKERERS.)  Have a look at a very thoughtful essay in Technology Review that considers some factors that the tech-transcendentalists - in their zeal to believe - may have missed.

Fortunately, the paucity of great economy-driving inventions dows not apply to pure science. A list of scientific and technical accomplishments made in 2012 suggests that our time of wonders is not behind us, but ahead.  Giving vision to the blind, discovering rogue planets or others made of diamond ... or orbiting the nearest star. Hacking the brain.  Photographing DNA. Invisibility cloaks and more...

== Saving the World... with self-driving cars? ==

Climate change increases the risk of many types of record-breaking extreme weather events that threaten communities across the country. In 2012, there were 3,527 monthly weather records broken for heat, rain, and snow in the US, according to information from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). That's even more than the 3,251 records smashed in 2011—and some of the newly-broken records had stood for 30 years or more.  More ammo for your idiot uncle to frantically dodge and deflect.

Okay, so what do cars have to do with solving this? Recall a couple of postings ago I described my own small role in the Clean Air Car Race of 1970, which might have hastened the removal of lead from gasoline. Now comes the endeavor of another Brin... Google's self-driving car, which may offer not only convenience, but a decline in the need for personally-owned automobiles, overall.  A problem for Detroit, but a boon to urban centers, if you can share a car with a dozen others and use your phone to summon it to come get you, whenever you need a ride.  Or join a coop or a flash-rental agency to get the same thing.  Or unleash your own car at night to roam around as a taxi, earning you bread?

== Science Potpourri ==

Kaggle attempts to use crowd-sourcing and contests/prizes to help small companies solve knotty software problems quickly. Companies pay to post their competitions to Kaggle. But those fees will be waived for the five startups Kaggle selects to take part in its new experiment in crowdsourced algorithms.

The bizarre notion of "negative temperatures"  seems weird and quasi-mystical... though those claiming to have achieved it do not define temperature the way most of us do, as a property of atomic motion, but rather as a thermodynamic quality. From my understanding of what they are doing, it sounds rather like the inverted energy-state system you get inside a laser, plus some mumbo terminology... plus a trick of creating atoms that each have a "maximum energy state"... then causing the number of occupied high energy states to outnumber the low energy ones.  When all of the system's energy is crammed into those maximum energy states, the entropy of the system actually falls. That is, by strict, statistical definition.

See also this take on it. What the article doesn't explain is how the authors blocked  the system from simply adding higher states as happens in regular physics, all the way to ionized plasma. The researchers achieved this at nano-temperatures near absolute zero, which suggests taking advantage of some quantum-level barrier that can only be used in such extremely cold ranges.  Hence all the talk of "practical uses" seems, well, far fetched. In that light, "negative temperature" is a thermodynamics legalism. In fact, well, I feel frosty toward it.

Meanwhile... Australian Zircons have long been considered the oldest tracers of geology on Earth.  But this one apparently formed when the planet was just 150 million years old. In there are more surprises...tales of the new born earth.

== Bio Miscellany! ==

We are definitely entering the era of "augmented soldiers" that I forecast in The Postman. Studies are underway, how the Pentagon and others might negotiate the minefield of risks and opportunities ahead.

A "micromort" is a unit of statistical chance of increasing your likelihood of dying by one millionth (or decreasing it.)  An interesting approach to risk assessment.

A new device about the size of a business card could allow health care providers to test for insulin and other blood proteins, cholesterol, and even signs of viral or bacterial infection all at the same time — with one drop of blood.

On 23 occasions over the past several years, wild dolphins were observed giving gifts to humans at the Tangalooma Island Resort in Australia. The gifts included eels, tuna, squid, an octopus and an assortment of many other types of different fin fish.

And while we're at sea... Japanese researchers post first video of a giant squid in its natural habitat.

Release the kraken! A collection of tales and legends, poems and fiction, from Verne to Tennyson -- about this marvelous cephalopod.

The detailed changes in the structure of a virus as it infects an E. coli bacterium have been observed for the first time. 

Instructing scar tissue to change itself into healthy tissue. By using a cocktail of three specific genes researchers have used gene therapy to reprogram the scar tissue cells on a damaged heart into functional muscle cells, while the addition of a fourth gene stimulated the growth of blood vessels to enhance the effect.

The doctor's office of the future: a kiosk at your local grocery store?

 == And Technology on parade ==

Russia sets its sights on the moon: Four robot probes due for 2015, a manned mission by 2030. The first flight, slated for 2015, will see a 1.2 ton lunar lander called Luna-Glob (Moon Globe) deposited on the moon's surface to search for water, take soil samples, and beam back its findings to Earth. I wish Phobos-Grunt had succeeded... Phobos is valuable. Not so sure about the rest of this.

A Topological Recipe Book for New Materials. Researchers showed that they can create a recipe book to build new materials using the mathematics of topology (whose properties that do not change when an object is continuously deformed.)

I've always been a junkie for bridges.  I love every variety and find them the most esthetically wonderful things we humans make, blending art and nature's laws.  Now see how smart design and super materials are enabling ever longer cable-stay bridges.

Researchers used electricity on certain regions in the brain of a patient with chronic, severe facial pain to release an opiate-like substance that’s considered one of the body’s most powerful painkillers.

Construction is complete on behemoth airship; first flight planned. Worldwide Aeros, a company of about 100 employees, built the prototype under a contract of about $35 million from the Pentagon and NASA. The Aeroscraft is a zeppelin with a 230-foot rigid skeleton made of aluminum and carbon fiber. It's a new type of hybrid aircraft that combines airplane and airship technologies.

North Dakota is now brighter than Pennsylvania, as seen from space. Why? The fracking boom has so many oil rigs at work, flaring off excess natural gas under super-lax state rules, that ND glows like New York. Ah, yummy greenhouse. This needs adjustment. And soon.

UCSD has introduced Diego-san, a new humanoid robot who mimics the expressions of a one-year-old child. Diego-san’s hardware was developed by two leading robot manufacturers: the head by Hanson Robotics and the body by Japan’s Kokoro Co. The project is led by University of California, San Diego research scientist Javier Movellan, who directs the Institute for Neural Computation’s Machine Perception Laboratory. Well into the Uncanny Valley...

Read an update on the Google Glass Project, which promises to deliver heads-up, augmented reality (AR) to smart glasses you'll wear on the street... supposedly in 2014.  And to see where all this will lead?  Have a look at your future in Vinge's  RAINBOW'S END or (even more accurately) my EXISTENCE.

Challenging literature is good for the brain? Better than self-help books. Maybe even try some challenging Science Fiction titles....

Nanowire Arrays for Better Piezoelectric Energy Generators. Researchers developed a nanogenerator consisting of an array of vertically aligned nanowires that, when deformed by an impact or twist induces a piezoelectric production of electrons. The proof-of-concept work included producing enough energy to turn on an LED light..

And finally...  Ever had one of those chilling "coincidence" moments when Some set of flukes coincide?  "What're the odds of THAT happening?"  Are you familiar with The Odds Must Be Crazy website?  They collect these kinds of coincidences and attempt to de-mystify them with science and statistics.

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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The Decline -- and Future -- of Manufacturing

What if America lost its knack for making things?  A disturbing thought...

Or is there a "maker culture" revival starting? See for instance the rise of Hackerspaces around the world  -- machine shops where individuals can come together to build, share ideas and invent. Make Magazine offers resources for the DIY and maker movement -- which The Economist wrote could "change how science is taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution."

Manufacturing is the root that all other projects sprout from... even the arts!  In a new graphic novel - TINKERERS - famed author David Brin combines art with a guided tour of history and tech, exploring how to win back the knack!

I kid you not! I was asked by a major metals industry group to create a comic book set in 20 years, that discusses the many reasons for US industrial decline... and how it might come back.

A low-res preview edition is available online (if you'll spread the word!)

Set in the near future of 2024, Tinkerers portrays a small American town whose nearby river bridge -- its lifeline to the world -- collapses one day for lack of maintenance and care. Young Danny Nakamura becomes a hero, using his tinkering skills to save a busload of kids. He then goes on a quest, visiting some of the smartest people in town to ask them why and how this disaster could have happened. Did the bridge's decay and collapse illustrate a decline in citizens' ability to maintain their industry…and civilization?

Physical copies will be available soon from Amazon. Comments are welcome...

Tinkerers has its own Facebook page!

For a more academic analysis of the problem, see Producing Prosperity: Why America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance, by Harvard Business School Professors Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih.

And here’s a timely-related piece of news -- Manufacturing with every atom in its place: a scanning tunneling microscope can be used to remove surface atoms one at a time, and then add single atomic layers only to those cleaned areas.



=== OTHER MATTERS ===


That 90 minute audio interview I gave last month, for Jay Ackroyd’s BlogTalkRadio (in conjunction with an event on Second Life), is now available on podcast. 


More specifically about the topic of Extraterrestrial life - here's a podcast and interview I gave to Tom Fudge of KPBS radio.

See a fan’s way-cool visual bibliography of my works.

=== And Science! ===

Cancer is a modern, man-made disease (?) caused by environmental factors such as pollution and diet, a study by University of Manchester scientists has strongly suggested. A study of remains and literature from ancient Egypt and Greece and earlier periods — carried out at the University of Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology and published in Nature — includes the first histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy. Ummm....

Paul Davies argues for a one-way manned mission to Mars, where astronauts plan to stay for the rest of their life, setting up a permanent colony, representing a commitment to space and a return to the can-do spirit of exploration "To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars" (Appears in the often-bizarre “Journal of Cosmology.”)

A terrific cartoon exploration (in a sci-fi'ish vein) of some fun philosophical quandaries.  Hilarious... and a bit of a take on the concepts in KILN PEOPLE.

“James Cameron will take moviegoers back to Pandora in a pair of Avatar sequels (actually prequels) that he promises will deliver the same visual and emotional impact as the original sci-fi smash.”  Whine groan and gnashing of teeth!  Not because I begrudge Cameron... he gave the world a terrific romp and unleashed new technologies that will probably get talking dolphins onto your screens (or holo tanks) within the decade!

No, what upsets me is that I have a LOT to say about Avatar, both good and bad, that I’ve been putting off.  Thoughts that Mr. Cameron really ought to ponder... even if he chooses to reject my advice. (A fellow who has given us so much is entitled.)  I had hoped to put it off for a while......now I dunno. The issues are pretty darn important. Cameron is trying to teach lessons that aren't getting through... and won't, so long as he makes some basic polemical mistakes.

Research at the University of Chicago indicates that a clenched fish can help deal with stress, anger -- and concentrates the mind away from negative actions.

What Kevin Kelly says about his wonderful new book, What Technology Wants. ”What I learned from writing this book is that I want to minimize the amount of technology in my own life while maximizing it for others. I want the largest pool of choices possible so that I can select a minimal set of  highly-evolved tools that will optimize my gifts. At the same time I have a moral obligation to maximize the amount of technologies in the world at large so that others may also select their minimal set from this ever growing pool of possibilities.”

Gregory Benford ruminates, entertainingly, about the prospects for extended life through cryonics.  He leaves out some factors, alas, like the odds that people in future generations would want to thaw you out and bring you back!  They’ll be the ones with the power, right?  In that case, your top priority should not be stashing “investments” to mature and make you rich in the 25th century.  It should be to make a better world that will be filled with future folk who are rich and wise and generous... and who might possibly recall - with some gratitude - the efforts that you contributed.  To solving problems in your own time, and making a civilization worthy of the name.

The founders of Recorded Future, a new Boston area start-up, believe there is value in applying Google-like search capabilities and a simple interface to a tightly constrained set of data: occurrences that are expected or predicted to happen tomorrow and beyond.  It looks fascinating and (at last!) a fresh break away from the over-hyped realm of Prediction Markets.

Since he first heralded our era of environmental collapse in 1989's The End of Nature, Bill McKibben has raised a series of eloquent alarms. In Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, he leads readers to the devastatingly comprehensive conclusion that we no longer inhabit the world in which we've flourished for most of human history: we've passed the tipping point for dramatic climate change, and even if we could stop emissions yesterday, our world will keep warming, triggering more extreme storms, droughts, and other erratic catastrophes, for centuries to come. This is not just our grandchildren's problem, or our children's--we're living through the effects of climate change now, and it's time for us to get creative about our survival.

Bacteria R Us : Are we being manipulated by our bacteria? Ninety percent of the cells in your body are bacteria, not human cells. These bacteria appear to coordinate and even ‘communicate’ among themselves (termed quorum sensing), to manipulate the chemistry of their environment.

Half the world’s population burns biomass to cook food, contributing to deforestation & global warming. Solar cookers may be part of the solution: in Africa women & children spend 3-4 hrs gathering a day’s supply of firewood & often resort to animal dung (fumes cause respiratory problems). Solar cookers can be used to make water potable, reducing disease, improving life in refugee camps. http://www.solarcookers.org/

Dolphins uplifting themselves? In Australia, a group of river dolphins has learned to walk on water, by rapidly paddling their tail fluke. The first dolphin learned during an episode in captivity; she taught others, who passed on the technique –just for fun. An example of cultural transmission in the wild.

Why complex life probably evolved only once: the key step may be in forming complex eukaryotic cells – the more complex the cell, the more problems generating enough energy.  In fact, I consider these authors to be foolish. Cells have incorporated other cells many times, not just once.  

Just released: Alex Lightman’s new book, Reconciliation – offering 78 reasons why we should end the U.S. embargo of Cuba. After fifty years of a failed policy, it’s time for a fresh start. Mind you I think Fidel Castro needlessly jumbled needless autocracy with a socialist experiment that could have (alas) been tried in good faith, in the most favorable of all conditions. We (humanity) never got to see the experiment, because he gave in to human delusional temptations that any astute reader of history should have known, and avoided... but that very few powerful men ever do, on their own.  Having said that... it is simply time. Open it all up. FLood that island with tourists and good and light and returning-rich-emigres. Just do it.

Vote on Andrew Burt’s ad hoc “what’s the best idea” site... and maybe win $75!


===  AM I A FRIEND OF THE SHOW? ===

A crew from the Colbert Report just spent 7 hours here in my home, asking about alien invaders!  I tried to stay "calm & mature" but I'm sure they'll edit-for-humor.  Heck, I love the show (and they gave me great schwag!) So I guess they can make me look dopey in a good cause.... ;-)