Today on Ask Professor Obvious, it turns out that when you toss a heavy object into the air, it falls toward the Earth not away from it. And while that may not be completely obvious to everyone, most people may already be aware that Owning a car is linked to less physical activity and weight gain.
The Week has cherry picked a few studies from 2019 as best. Although they did pick ones with large sample sizes, what would be “best” to me would be some kind of meta-analysis of all studies published and what they said on balance, with some kind of grading for quality and communication of the uncertainty involved. That would be awesome journalism, but I imagine it would be expensive. The great news is that if you add up all the percentages that doing this and that can reduce your chances of death, you can live forever! Anyway, here is my quick summary:
This article is about devices that can supposedly help you get more out of whatever hours of sleep you manage to get. It sound suspicious, but appears to be backed by at least some research and scientific/medical opinion.
One of the most promising techniques to do so works a bit like a metronome counting the brain into the correct rhythms. Experimental participants wear a headset that records their brain activity and notes when they have started to make those slow waves. The device then plays short pulses of gentle sound, beginning in sync with the brain’s natural slow waves, at regular intervals over the night. The sounds are quiet enough to avoid waking the participant, but loud enough to be registered, unconsciously, by the brain.
BBC
One of the devices commercially available is made by Phillips and costs around $370 (I do not get any sort of commission if you click on this link or buy one.)
In the category of new diseases to worry about, and just in case you have not yet perused the latest issue of the Journal of Fungi, Candida auris is a really dangerous yeast fungus making the rounds in hospitals.
On the Origins of a Species: What Might Explain the Rise of Candida auris?
Candida auris is an emerging multidrug-resistant yeast first described in 2009 that has since caused healthcare-associated outbreaks of severe human infections around the world. In some hospitals, it has become a leading cause of invasive candidiasis. C. auris is markedly different from most other pathogenic Candida species in its genetics, antifungal resistance, and ability to spread between patients. The reasons why this fungus began spreading widely in the last decade remain a mystery. We examine available data on C. auris and related species, including genomic epidemiology, phenotypic characteristics, and sites of detection, to put forth hypotheses on its possible origins. C. auris has not been detected in the natural environment; related species have been detected in in plants, insects, and aquatic environments, as well as from human body sites. It can tolerate hypersaline environments and higher temperatures than most Candida species. We explore hypotheses about the pre-emergence niche of C. auris, whether in the environmental or human microbiome, and speculate on factors that might have led to its spread, including the possible roles of healthcare, antifungal use, and environmental changes, including human activities that might have expanded its presence in the environment or caused increased human contact.
Most frightening and/or depressing story:
Most hopeful story:
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
Wired’s Gadget Lab, strangely enough, has an episode on male birth control. This is not a gadget, but a hormonal pill men could take. This has been a goal for many decades with little or no progress, and now it sounds like it may be within reach in the near future. Opinions will vary, but I think anything that gives us more control over our reproductive options is good for individual freedom and for society as a whole.
This article in The Week mentions a few things.
Humans grow fewer blood vessels in their muscles with age, which is believed to result in the gradual breakdown of vital organs. The same pattern exists in mice. In 2018, Harvard researchers fed mice a chemical to manipulate the gene associated with blood vessel growth and found that old mice subsequently were able to run on a treadmill 56 percent longer. While that work continues, biohackers are transfixed by nootropics — “smart drugs,” amino acids, and other supplements that purportedly boost cognitive abilities and prevent brain aging.
Mainstream scientists and doctors are still saying nay. I don’t know but exercising to keep the oxygen level up seems like a good idea.
This seems like a good idea actually – a toilet seat that measures your heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen level. It’s designed for hospitals, but it makes a lot of sense to me. It would happen automatically, built automatically into your daily routine and with no wasted time or extra effort. You could have it sent right to your doctor if you wanted to.
One of the public services I provide is to bring you new diseases to worry about. Just in case Ebola is not horrifying enough (and with apologies to anyone who has been personally touched by it), there is concern about a new disease originating from human-wildlife contact as tropical forests are encroached on, in this case in Bangladesh.
Nipah virus encephalitis is one of eight diseases that the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified as epidemic threats in need of prioritization. The list includes Ebola, SARS, Zika, and an as-yet unknown affliction referred to as “Disease X.” All eight have been prioritized because of their inherent epidemic potential, and also the fact that there are currently insufficient measures in place to prevent them…Because bats typically live in large colonies and roost in close proximity to one another, microbes are easily passed among members of the group. While virus numbers are typically kept in check by each bat’s immune system, when an animal is stressed, its defenses can become compromised. Much as a cold might make us cough and sneeze, a bat’s weakened immune system can cause the animal to shed viruses into its surroundings through saliva, urine, and feces…
The symptoms of the disease are now well documented, although they vary considerably from patient to patient and strain to strain. While some infected humans are completely asymptomatic, most initially develop symptoms including fever, headaches, vomiting, and sore throat. Some develop acute respiratory infections in the early stages of the disease; others never do. After a few days to a couple of weeks, many patients start to exhibit more serious signs of encephalitis—dizziness, drowsiness, altered consciousness, and other neurological changes. Within another day or two, the disease often progresses to coma, then death.
Most frightening and/or depressing stories:
Climate change, nuclear weapons, and pandemics. If I go back and look at last year’s post, this list of existential threats is going to be pretty much the same. Add to this the depressing grind of permanent war which magnifies these risks and diverts resources that could be used to deal with them. True, we could say that we got through 2018 without a nuclear detonation, pandemic, or ecological collapse, and under the circumstances we should sit back, count our blessings, and wait for better leadership. And while our leadership is particularly inept at the moment, I think Noam Chomsky has a point that political administration after political administration has failed to solve these problems and this seems unlikely to improve. The earthquake risk is particularly troublesome. Think about the shock we felt over the inept response to Katrina, and now think about how essentially the same thing happened in Puerto Rico, we are not really dealing with it in an acceptable way, and the public and news media have essentially just shrugged it off and moved on. If the hurricanes, floods, fires and droughts just keep hitting harder and more often, and we don’t fully respond to one before the next hits, it could mean a slow downward spiral. And if that means we gradually lose our ability to bounce back fully from small and medium size disasters, a truly huge disaster like an epic earthquake on the west coast might be the one that pushes our society to a breaking point.
Most hopeful stories:
I believe our children are our future…ya ya blahda blahda. It’s a huge cliche, and yet to be hopeful about our world I have to have some hope that future generations can be better system thinkers and problem solvers and ethical actors than recent generations have been. Because despite identifying problems and even potential solutions we are consistently failing to make choices as a society that could divert us from the current failure path. And so I highlighted a few stories above about ideas for better preparing future generations, ranging from traditional school subjects like reading and music, to more innovative ones like meditation and general system theory, and just maybe we should be open to the idea that the right amount of the right drugs can help.
Fossil fuels just might be on their way out, as alternatives start to become economical and public outrage slowly, almost imperceptibly continues to build.
There is real progress in the fight against disease, which alleviates enormous quantities of human suffering. I mention AIDS, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease above. We can be happy about that, of course. There are ideas about how to grow more food, which is going to be necessary to avoid enormous quantities of human suffering. Lest anyone think otherwise, my position is that we desperately need to reduce our ecological footprint, but human life is precious and nobody deserves to suffer illness or hunger.
Good street design that lets people get around using mostly their own muscle power. It might not be sexy, but it is one of the keys to physical and mental health, clean air and water, biodiversity, social and economic vibrancy in our cities. Come to think of it, I take that back, it can be sexy if done well.
Good street design and general systems theory – proof that solutions exist and we just don’t recognize or make use of them. Here’s where I want to insert a positive sentence about how 2019 is the year this all changes for the better. Well, sorry, you’ll have to find someone less cynical than me, and/or with much better powers of communication and persuasion than me to get the ball rolling. On the off chance I have persuaded you, and you have communication and/or persuasion super powers, let me know.
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
Whatever else happens, technology and accumulation of human knowledge in general march on, of course. Computer, robotics, and surveillence technology march on. The human move into space is much slower and painful than many would have predicted half a century ago, and yet it is proceeding.
I’ll never drop the waterless sanitation thing, no matter how much others make fun of me. It’s going to happen, eventually. I don’t know whether we will colonize Mars or stop defecating in our water supply first, but both will happen.
The gene drive thing is really wild the more I think about it. This means we now have the ability to identify a species or group of species we don’t want to exist, then cause it not to exist in relatively short order. This seems like it could be terrifying in the wrong hands, doesn’t it? I’m not even sure I buy into the idea that rats and mosquitoes have no positive ecological functions at all. Aren’t there bats and birds that rely on mosquitoes as a food source? Okay, I’m really not sure what redeeming features rats have, although I did read a few years ago that in a serious food crunch farming rats would be a much more efficient way of turning very marginal materials into edible protein than chicken.
The universe in a bottle thing is mind blowing if you spend too much time thinking about it. It could just be bottles all the way down. It’s best not to spend too much time thinking about it.
That’s it, Happy 2019!