Everyday Erinyes #321

 Posted by at 5:21 am  Politics
Jun 052022
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

My primary care physiocian once told me I deserved an honorary medical degree because I can spell all my prescription drugs (proprietary and generic), as well as all my OTC meds (proprietary and generic) correctly. He was joking, of course. I simply was born with the spelling gene, and I also do my best to pay attention. But his remark does illustrate how little attention so many people pay to matters of their own health. I am not a doctor nor a medical technician, and I certainly don’t play one on TV. But I do do “due diligence” when anythong new turns up in or near my own body (near meaning physically near, like a pandemic, or emotionally near, like in one or more people I care about.) And cancer is something none of us can really avoid being near at some point or other. So when something like this turns up, so does my gaze.
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‘Masked’ cancer drug stealthily trains immune system to kill tumors while sparing healthy tissues, reducing treatment side effects

Dendritic cells (green) produce cytokines like IL-12, which can train T cells (pink) to attack tumors.
Victor Segura Ibarra and Rita Serda/National Cancer Institute via Flickr, CC BY-NC

Aslan Mansurov, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

Many cancer treatments are notoriously savage on the body. Drugs often attack both healthy cells and tumor cells, causing a plethora of side effects. Immunotherapies that help the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells are no different. Though they have prolonged the lives of countless patients, they work in only a subset of patients. One study found that fewer than 30% of breast cancer patients respond to one of the most common forms of immunotherapy.

But what if drugs could be engineered to attack only tumor cells and spare the rest of the body? To that end, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering have designed a method to keep one promising cancer drug from wreaking havoc by “masking” it until it reaches a tumor.

Immunotherapies help the immune system recognize and target cancer cells.

The promise of IL-12

Cytokines are proteins that can modulate how the immune system responds to threats. One way they do this is by activating killer T cells, a type of white blood cells that can attack cancer cells. Because cytokines can train the immune system to kill tumors, this makes them very promising as cancer treatments.

One such cytokine is interleukin-12, or IL-12. Though it was discovered more than 30 years ago, IL-12 still isn’t an FDA-approved therapy for cancer patients because of its severe side effects, such as liver damage. This is in part because IL-12 instructs immune cells to produce a large amount of inflammatory molecules that can damage the body.

Scientists have since been working to reengineer IL-12 to be more tolerable while retaining its powerful cancer-killing effects.

Masking the killer

To create a safer version of IL-12, my colleagues and I took advantage of one of the main differences between healthy and cancerous tissue: an excess of growth-promoting enzymes in cancers. Because cancer cells proliferate very rapidly, they overproduce certain enzymes that help them invade the nearby healthy tissue and metastasize to other parts of the body. Healthy cells grow at a much slower pace and produce fewer of these enzymes.

With this in mind, we “masked” IL-12 with a cap that covers the part of the molecule that normally binds to immune cells to activate them. The cap is removed only when it comes into contact with enzymes found in the vicinity of tumors. When these enzymes chop off the cap, IL-12 is reactivated and spurs nearby killer T cells to attack the tumor.

Killer T cells surrounding a cancer cell
Killer T cells (green and red) can attach to cancer cells (blue, center) and kill them by releasing toxic chemicals (red), a move scientists have dubbed ‘the kiss of death.’
NIH/Flickr

When we applied these masked IL-12 molecules to both healthy and tumor tissue donated by melanoma and breast cancer patients, our results confirmed that only the tumor samples were able to remove the cap. This indicated that masked IL-12 could potentially drive a strong immune response against tumors without causing damage to healthy organs.

We then examined how safe masked IL-12 is by measuring liver damage biomarkers in mice. We found that immune-related side effects typically associated with IL-12 were notably absent in mice treated with masked IL-12 over a period of several weeks, indicating improved safety.

In breast cancer models, our masked IL-12 resulted in a 90% cure rate, while treatment with a commonly used immunotherapy called a checkpoint inhibitor resulted in only a 10% cure rate. In a model of colon cancer, masked IL-12 showed a 100% cure rate.

Our next step is to test the modified IL-12 in cancer patients. While it will take time to bring this encouraging development directly to patients, we believe a promising new treatment is on the horizon.The Conversation

Aslan Mansurov, Postdoctoral Researcher in Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, “training” certainly implies a lower level of intellectual involvement than “teaching” or “educating,” but even so, it sounds like pure science fiction to even think about “training”a non-sentient  particle such as a protein to act in a certain way – to stop working in some environments and start working in others. Even though it accomplishes this mission by reacting in a particular way to particular enzymes, it still sounds virtually miraculous. This solution is not ready to approve yet, but it is ready for testing in live cancer patients, and, though I know it will take time, I am looking forward to seeing resutlts from that testing. Please, Eumenides, keep an eye out (and help in any way you can.)

The Furies and I will be back.

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Jun 042022
 

Yesterday,I slept in again, due to shoulder issues again, although, because I resomved them a couple of hours earlier than the night before, I also got more sleep than the night before.  Hopefyllu I have figures out the frmula and can resolve them earlier still while they last.  I al assuing they are arthritis, and arthritis (and sciatica) hae a habit of coming in flare-ups and gong away again after 2-6 weeks, depending.  That doesn’t mean they won’t ever come back, but – touching wood – after my knee flareup in February 2020 (which was agonizing), that knee has been fine ever since – unlike some other body parts I could mention.  So there can be good long periosof no to minimal pain also.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Project on Government Oversight – How to Protect Yourself from Surveillance While Seeking Reproductive Health Care
Quote – Living under an abortion ban in 2022 will not be similar to 1972, before Roe v. Wade. Due to the massive surveillance powers the government now possesses, the consequences of the ban could be much more draconian. Law enforcement not only has powerful tools to monitor individuals, but can capture a stream of sensitive data we produce in our daily lives, often without us realizing it’s happening. And investigating individuals for prohibited abortions will likely direct the government’s immense surveillance powers at the most intimate medical, familial, and sexual details of people’s lives.
Click through for other aspects. I know a lot of readers here will never be pregnant – I won’t myself. But, in addition to at least some of us having people in our lives we care about whoo could, I found reading this made me think about other things I tend to take for granted. You may also.

PolitiZoom – Trump Tops Pumpkin Pie, Kardashians as “worst thing to come from US” In British Poll.
Quote – In a poll of 2,000 Brits conducted by Lottoland.co.uk who are pushing their own lousy U.S. exports, Powerball and Megamillions on an unsuspecting British Public, TFG walked away with the title of “worst thing to come out out of America” handily topping gun culture, the Kardashians and American Football.
Click through for details. Yes, this is fluff Bu it’s cool fluff.

Science alert – The Human Heart Can Repair Itself, And We Now Know Which Cells Are Crucial For It
Quote – Key to the study was the discovery of the role played by macrophages, specialist cells that can destroy bacteria or initiate helpful inflammation responses. As the first responders on a scene after a heart attack, these macrophages produce a particular type of protein called VEGFC, the researchers report. “We found that macrophages, or immune cells that rush to the heart after a heart attack to ‘eat’ damaged or dead tissue, also induce vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGFC) that triggers the formation of new lymphatic vessels and promotes healing,” says pathologist Edward Thorp from Northwestern University in Illinois.
Click through for full info. There’s nothing here that makes any recommendations for current patients – but it’s hopeful that such recommendations may come as we understand more.

Food For Thought

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Everyday Erinyes #320

 Posted by at 5:56 pm  Plus, Politics
May 292022
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

There are a lot of things I could be putting front and center this week. However, they are pretty well already front and center. This story got knocked off of all the front pages, and I thought, before it gets back on them, it might be good to have some common sense and facts So here it is.
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What is monkeypox? A microbiologist explains what’s known about this smallpox cousin

Monkeypox causes lesions that resemble pus-filled blisters, which eventually scab over.
CDC/Getty Images

Rodney E. Rohde, Texas State University

On May 18, 2022, Massachusetts health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed a single case of monkeypox in a patient who had recently traveled to Canada. Cases have also been reported in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Monkeypox isn’t a new disease. The first confirmed human case was in 1970, when the virus was isolated from a child suspected of having smallpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Monkeypox is unlikely to cause another pandemic, but with COVID-19 top of mind, fear of another major outbreak is understandable. Though rare and usually mild, monkeypox can still potentially cause severe illness. Health officials are concerned that more cases will arise with increased travel.

I’m a researcher who has worked in public health and medical laboratories for over three decades, especially in the realm of diseases with animal origins. What exactly is happening in the current outbreak, and what does history tell us about monkeypox?

A cousin of smallpox

Monkeypox is caused by the monkeypox virus, which belongs to a subset of the Poxviridae family of viruses called Orthopoxvirus. This subset includes the smallpox, vaccinia and cowpox viruses. While an animal reservoir for monkeypox virus is unknown, African rodents are suspected to play a part in transmission. The monkeypox virus has only been isolated twice from an animal in nature. Diagnostic testing for monkeypox is currently only available at Laboratory Response Network labs in the U.S. and globally.

The name “monkeypox” comes from the first documented cases of the illness in animals in 1958, when two outbreaks occurred in monkeys kept for research. However, the virus did not jump from monkeys to humans, nor are monkeys major carriers of the disease.

Electron microscope view of monkeypox, showing oval-shaped, mature virus particles and spherical, immature virions
Monkeypox belongs to the Poxviridae family of viruses, which includes smallpox.
CDC/ Cynthia S. Goldsmith

Epidemiology

Since the first reported human case, monkeypox has been found in several other central and western African countries, with the majority of infections in the DRC. Cases outside of Africa have been linked to international travel or imported animals, including in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The first reported cases of monkeypox in the U.S. was in 2003, from an outbreak in Texas linked to a shipment of animals from Ghana. There were also travel-associated cases in November and July 2021 in Maryland.

Because monkeypox is closely related to smallpox, the smallpox vaccine can provide protection against infection from both viruses. Since smallpox was officially eradicated, however, routine smallpox vaccinations for the U.S. general population were stopped in 1972. Because of this, monkeypox has been appearing increasingly in unvaccinated people.

Person getting temperature tested at airport
Indonesia began screening travelers after a monkeypox case was reported in Singapore in May 2019.
Jepayona Delita/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Transmission

The virus can be transmitted through contact with an infected person or animal or contaminated surfaces. Typically, the virus enters the body through broken skin, inhalation or the mucous membranes in the eyes, nose or mouth. Researchers believe that human-to-human transmission is mostly through inhalation of large respiratory droplets rather than direct contact with bodily fluids or indirect contact through clothes. Human-to-human transmission rates for monkeypox have been limited.

Health officials are worried the virus may currently be spreading undetected through community transmission, possibly through a new mechanism or route. Where and how infections are occurring are still under investigation.

Signs and symptoms

After the virus enters the body, it starts to replicate and spread through the body via the bloodstream. Symptoms usually don’t appear until one to two weeks after infection.

Monkeypox produces smallpox-like skin lesions, but symptoms are usually milder than those of smallpox. Flu-like symptoms are common initially, ranging from fever and headache to shortness of breath. One to 10 days later, a rash can appear on the extremities, head or torso that eventually turns into blisters filled with pus. Overall, symptoms usually last for two to four weeks, while skin lesions usually scab over in 14 to 21 days.

While monkeypox is rare and usually non-fatal, one version of the disease kills around 10% of infected people. The form of the virus currently circulating is thought to be milder, with a fatality rate of less than 1%.

Vaccines and treatments

Treatment for monkeypox is primarily focused on relieving symptoms. According to the CDC, no treatments are available to cure monkeypox infection.

Because smallpox is closely related to monkeypox, the smallpox vaccine can protect against both diseases.

Evidence suggests that the smallpox vaccine can help prevent monkeypox infections and decrease the severity of the symptoms. One vaccine known as Imvamune or Imvanex is licensed in the U.S. to prevent monkeypox and smallpox.

Vaccination after exposure to the virus may also help decrease chances of severe illness. The CDC currently recommends smallpox vaccination only in people who have been or are likely to be exposed to monkeypox. Immunocompromised people are at high risk.The Conversation

Rodney E. Rohde, Regents’ Professor of Clinical Laboratory Science, Texas State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, it sounds to me as though health officials are paranoid over this – and I say that not in mockery, but in approval. Unfounded assumptions, particularly about transmission, are one of the ways pandemics start and get worse.There’s quite a bit we don’t know about monkey pox – but with the professionals watching it as they are, that will likely change soon. Hopefully we will learn enough.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #314

 Posted by at 2:21 pm  Politics
Apr 172022
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I don’t know whether the Erinyes are science geeks – but I suppose there’s no reason they might not be. Certainly it’s not unreasonable to suspect any person or group which is dedicated to truth and justice would be dedicated to science as well. But I know some of us are also interested in sceince as well as justice and truth, and this news, thoug it sounds small compared with what was previously accomplished, is still a big deal.
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The Human Genome Project pieced together only 92% of the DNA – now scientists have finally filled in the remaining 8%

Over half of the human genome contains repetitive DNA sequences whose functions are still not fully understood.
Malte Mueller/fStop via Getty Images

Gabrielle Hartley, University of Connecticut

When the Human Genome Project announced that they had completed the first human genome in 2003, it was a momentous accomplishment – for the first time, the DNA blueprint of human life was unlocked. But it came with a catch – they weren’t actually able to put together all the genetic information in the genome. There were gaps: unfilled, often repetitive regions that were too confusing to piece together.

With advancements in technology that could handle these repetitive sequences, scientists finally filled those gaps in May 2021, and the first end-to-end human genome was officially published on Mar. 31, 2022.

I am a genome biologist who studies repetitive DNA sequences and how they shape genomes throughout evolutionary history. I was part of the team that helped characterize the repeat sequences missing from the genome. And now, with a truly complete human genome, these uncovered repetitive regions are finally being explored in full for the first time.

The missing puzzle pieces

German botanist Hans Winkler coined the word “genome” in 1920, combining the word “gene” with the suffix “-ome,” meaning “complete set,” to describe the full DNA sequence contained within each cell. Researchers still use this word a century later to refer to the genetic material that makes up an organism.

One way to describe what a genome looks like is to compare it to a reference book. In this analogy, a genome is an anthology containing the DNA instructions for life. It’s composed of a vast array of nucleotides (letters) that are packaged into chromosomes (chapters). Each chromosome contains genes (paragraphs) that are regions of DNA which code for the specific proteins that allow an organism to function.

Diagram of chromosome unraveling to coiled DNA, genes and component nucleotides
Genetic material is made of DNA tightly packaged into chromosomes. Only select regions of the DNA in a genome contain genes coding for proteins.
VectorMine/iStock via Getty Images Plus

While every living organism has a genome, the size of that genome varies from species to species. An elephant uses the same form of genetic information as the grass it eats and the bacteria in its gut. But no two genomes look exactly alike. Some are short, like the genome of the insect-dwelling bacteria Nasuia deltocephalinicola with just 137 genes across 112,000 nucleotides. Some, like the 149 billion nucleotides of the flowering plant Paris japonica, are so long that it’s difficult to get a sense of how many genes are contained within.

But genes as they’ve traditionally been understood – as stretches of DNA that code for proteins – are just a small part of an organism’s genome. In fact, they make up less than 2% of human DNA.

The human genome contains roughly 3 billion nucleotides and just under 20,000 protein-coding genes – an estimated 1% of the genome’s total length. The remaining 99% is non-coding DNA sequences that don’t produce proteins. Some are regulatory components that work as a switchboard to control how other genes work. Others are pseudogenes, or genomic relics that have lost their ability to function.

And over half of the human genome is repetitive, with multiple copies of near-identical sequences.

What is repetitive DNA?

The simplest form of repetitive DNA are blocks of DNA repeated over and over in tandem called satellites. While how much satellite DNA a given genome has varies from person to person, they often cluster toward the ends of chromosomes in regions called telomeres. These regions protect chromosomes from degrading during DNA replication. They’re also found in the centromeres of chromosomes, a region that helps keep genetic information intact when cells divide.

Researchers still lack a clear understanding of all the functions of satellite DNA. But because satellite DNA forms unique patterns in each person, forensic biologists and genealogists use this genomic “fingerprint” to match crime scene samples and track ancestry. Over 50 genetic disorders are linked to variations in satellite DNA, including Huntington’s disease.

46 human chromosomes colored blue with white telomeres against a black screen
Satellite DNA tends to cluster toward the ends of chromosomes in their telomeres. Here, 46 human chromosomes are colored blue, with white telomeres.
NIH Image Gallery/flickr, CC BY-NC

Another abundant type of repetitive DNA are transposable elements, or sequences that can move around the genome.

Some scientists have described them as selfish DNA because they can insert themselves anywhere in the genome, regardless of the consequences. As the human genome evolved, many transposable sequences collected mutations repressing their ability to move to avoid harmful interruptions. But some can likely still move about. For example, transposable element insertions are linked to a number of cases of hemophilia A, a genetic bleeding disorder.

Transposable DNA may be the reason why humans have a tailbone but no tail.

But transposable elements aren’t just disruptive. They can have regulatory functions that help control the expression of other DNA sequences. When they’re concentrated in centromeres, they may also help maintain the integrity of the genes fundamental to cell survival.

They can also contribute to evolution. Researchers recently found that the insertion of a transposable element into a gene important to development might be why some primates, including humans, no longer have tails. Chromosome rearrangements due to transposable elements are even linked to the genesis of new species like the gibbons of southeast Asia and the wallabies of Australia.

Completing the genomic puzzle

Until recently, many of these complex regions could be compared to the far side of the moon: known to exist, but unseen.

When the Human Genome Project first launched in 1990, technological limitations made it impossible to fully uncover repetitive regions in the genome. Available sequencing technology could only read about 500 nucleotides at a time, and these short fragments had to overlap one another in order to recreate the full sequence. Researchers used these overlapping segments to identify the next nucleotides in the sequence, incrementally extending the genome assembly one fragment at a time.

These repetitive gap regions were like putting together a 1,000-piece puzzle of an overcast sky: When every piece looks the same, how do you know where one cloud starts and another ends? With near-identical overlapping stretches in many spots, fully sequencing the genome by piecemeal became unfeasible. Millions of nucleotides remained hidden in the the first iteration of the human genome.

Since then, sequence patches have gradually filled in gaps of the human genome bit by bit. And in 2021, the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium, an international consortium of scientists working to complete a human genome assembly from end to end, announced that all remaining gaps were finally filled.

With the completion of the first human genome, researchers are now looking toward capturing the full diversity of humanity.

This was made possible by improved sequencing technology capable of reading longer sequences thousands of nucleotides in length. With more information to situate repetitive sequences within a larger picture, it became easier to identify their proper place in the genome. Like simplifying a 1,000-piece puzzle to a 100-piece puzzle, long-read sequences made it possible to assemble large repetitive regions for the first time.

With the increasing power of long-read DNA sequencing technology, geneticists are positioned to explore a new era of genomics, untangling complex repetitive sequences across populations and species for the first time. And a complete, gap-free human genome provides an invaluable resource for researchers to investigate repetitive regions that shape genetic structure and variation, species evolution and human health.

But one complete genome doesn’t capture it all. Efforts continue to create diverse genomic references that fully represent the human population and life on Earth. With more complete, “telomere-to-telomere” genome references, scientists’ understanding of the repetitive dark matter of DNA will become more clear.

[Get fascinating science, health and technology news. Sign up for The Conversation’s weekly science newsletter.]The Conversation

Gabrielle Hartley, PhD Candidate in Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, as technical as this information is, the article is jam-packed with analogies which make it much clearer. We have seen quantities of science which have increasingly demonstrated that we are more alike than we are different – and by “we,” science increasingly means not just humans and other humans, but humans and animals, even humans, animals, and plants. I am inclined to hope for more of the same, But I am even more inclined to hope that humans (and animals and plants as appropriate) can increasingly embrace our similarities and stop fretting so much about our differences, but instead, embracing them too. I’m sure that won’t happen spontaneously. And maybe that’s where you, ladies, can help us.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Apr 062022
 

Yesterday, our spring winds started. So did the spring fund drive of my reguar radio station (I’m sure there’s no connection), so I switched over to the one in Denver. Colorado Springs is not seeing any precipitation, nor is Denver (which, though it’s not warm, is having a red flag fire danger day, while up in the mountains there is a winter storm warning, and about 50 miles north a ski area is closed. At least out governor is well aware that climate change is a thing, but there is a limit to what he can do, and so much damage has already been done. Sure, at this altitude we don’t have o worry about sea level rise, but that is far from the only consequence.

Cartoon 06 0406Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – Why Biden’s plan to tax the super rich is moving from unlikely to likely, and why it’s really really important
Quote – Last week Joe Biden unveiled two tax proposals that would revive Teddy Roosevelt’s original vision, and could possibly slow or even reverse America’s march toward oligarchy: (1) a minimum income tax that Biden calls a billionaire tax but would in reality apply to households with a net worth of $100 million or more, and (2) a separate tax at death on gains from appreciated assets, even if the assets are not sold. The odds are growing that at least one of these proposals will get through the Senate in April or May via “reconciliation” requiring only a bare majority (i.e., all fifty Democratic senators plus the vice president). I’m told Joe Manchin is mostly on board (which means the other Democratic holdout, Kyrsten Sinema, will sign on as well).
Click through for the full essay, including some cartoons. I do hope his analysis is correct (not his analysis of the economy, we know that’s correct, but his analysis of the bills’ chances.)

Crooks and Liars – Fox Viewers Paid To Watch CNN Changed Their Minds After 30 Days
Quote – The results: Not only did CNN and Fox cover different things during the September 2020 survey period, but the audience of committed Fox viewers, which started the month with conservative predispositions, changed their minds on many issues.
Click through for methodology and result numbers, as well as a link to the Washington Post story. This may be the absolute best news of the year.  Now if we can only figure out how to use it.

Mother Jones – What Can Indigenous Worldviews Bring to Space Exploration? As It Turns Out, a Lot.
Quote – Language and thought have influenced SETI and science writ large, said Rebecca Charbonneau, a historian at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. During Europe’s Scientific Revolution, the philosopher Francis Bacon described nature as something to be subjugated, she said: “a thing for mankind, in his words, to control. And that’s kind of formed the basis for the way we think about science.”
Click through for thoughtful analysis. If there is carbon-based life (and/or non-carbon-based life – possibly even more important) anywhere we are likely to reach. this kind of thinking is an absolute necessity As good as we are at self-sabotage, however, I’m not convinced we can get there.

Food For Thought:

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Mar 042022
 

Glenn Kirschner – 1st Jan. 6 Insurrection Trial: US v. Guy Reffitt. What to Expect from the Prosecution, the Defense

Don Winslow Films – #RunningOutTheClock

Meidas Touch – Tucker Carlson PANICS, tries to rewrite history of pro-Putin statements… But we have receipts!!!

Lincoln Project – CPAC: Days 3 and 4 in 135 Seconds

Marcus Flowers for Congress [ in Marjorie’s District] –

VoteVets – Party of Putin

Beau – Let’s talk about the Carrington Event….

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Everyday Erinyes #303

 Posted by at 12:41 pm  Politics
Jan 302022
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Science. Science deniers. This is not new. The two kinds of people have existed side by side for literally thousands of years. Taking one fact as an example, consider the “flat earth.” Scientests have known the earth ws not flat, but instead a more of less spherical shape, as early as the 5th century B.C.E. I say scientists have known, not that everyone has known. Galileo ws threatened with excommunication and improsonment as recently as the 1600s C.E. for suggesting that the earth mpved around the sun. (Yet 200 years earlier, Dante’s Inferno/ Purgatorio/ Paradiso was based on the premise of a spherical earth, through which he descended to the lowest levels of Hell at the center (he did get the temperature wrong – he pictured it as frozen – he wasn’t a scientist himself, but he must have listened to some) and then ascended through the levels of purgatory to come out into paradise on the other side. Today most people have grasped at least the concept of the solar system, and yet some still have not, and consider th earth to be flat.

Medical advances have a bad name in some circles because testing advances can be problematic. Of course no one would consider trying an idea on humans before doing animal testing, which brings up the question of how do you get informed consent from a frog? There might be a way, but we certainly don’t know what it is.

But I really find it exciting what this particular group of scientests is trying to do – and I have to believe that TC also would be excited – peersonally. Of course they are not going to get results usable by humans in my lifetime – nor in the lifetime of anyone here – and, discouraging as it is I have to wonder if the human race itself will last long enough to get results usable by humans.

But it’s still exciting.
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A new treatment helped frogs regenerate their amputated legs – taking science one step closer to helping people regrow their body parts, too

Reactivating the signals cells use to regenerate could help patients regrow lost limbs and damaged tissue.
George Jones/Stockbyte via Getty Images

Michael Levin, Tufts University; David Kaplan, Tufts University, and Nirosha Murugan, Algoma University

Our bodies connect us to the world. When people lose parts of their bodies to disease or traumatic injury, they often feel that they’ve lost a part of who they are, even experiencing a grief akin to losing a loved one. Their sense of personal loss is justified because unlike salamanders or snarky comic book characters like Deadpool, adult human tissues generally do not regenerate – limb loss is permanent and irreversible.

Or is it?

While there have been significant advances in prosthetic and bionic technologies to replace lost limbs, they cannot yet restore a sense of touch, minimize the sensation of phantom pains or match the capabilities of natural limbs. Without reconstructing the limb itself, a person won’t be able to feel the touch of a loved one or the warmth of the sun.

We are researchers in regenerative and developmental biology and biomedical engineering. Our recent study in the journal Science Advances showed that just 24 hours of a treatment we designed is enough to regenerate fully functional and touch-sensitive limbs in frogs.

Kickstarting regeneration

During very early development, cells that will eventually become limbs and organs arrange themselves into precise anatomical structures using a set of chemical, biomechanical and electrical signals. In considering ways to regenerate limbs, we reasoned that it would be much easier to ask cells to repeat what they already did during early development. So we looked for ways to trigger the “build whatever normally was here” signal for cells at the site of a wound.

One of the major challenges in doing this, however, is figuring out how to create an environment that encourages the body to regenerate instead of forming scars. While scars help protect injured tissue from further damage, they also change the cellular environment in ways that prevent regeneration.

Axolotls are known for their powerful regenerative abilities.

Some aquatic animals such as the axolotl have mastered regeneration without scar formation. And even in early human development, the amniotic sac provides an environment that can facilitate regenerative mechanisms. We hypothesized that developing a similar environment could override scar formation at the time of injury and allow the body to reactivate dormant regenerative signals.

To implement this idea, we developed a wearable device made of a silk hydrogel as a way to create an isolated chamber for regeneration by blocking other signals that would direct the body to develop scars or undergo other processes. We then loaded the device with a cocktail of five drugs involved in normal animal development and tissue growth.

We chose to test the device using African clawed frogs, a species commonly used in animal research which, like humans, does not regenerate limbs in adulthood. We attached the device onto one leg stump for 24 hours. We then removed the device and observed how the site of the lost limb changed over time. Over the course of 18 months, we were amazed to find that the frogs were able to regenerate their legs, including fingerlike projections with significant nerve, bone and blood vessel regrowth. The limbs also responded to light pressure, meaning that they had a restored sense of touch, and allowed the frog to return to normal swimming behavior.

Frogs that were given the device but without the drug cocktail had limited limb regrowth without much functional restoration. And frogs that weren’t treated with the device or the drug cocktail did not regrow their limbs, leaving stumps that were insensitive to touch and functionally impaired.

Interestingly, the limbs of the frogs treated with the device and the drug cocktail weren’t perfectly reconstructed. For example, bones were sometimes fragmented. However, the incompleteness of the new limb tells us that other key molecular signals may be missing, and many aspects of the treatment can still be optimized. Once we identify these signals, adding them to the drug treatment could potentially fully reverse limb loss in the future.

Person putting on prosthetic leg
While prosthetic and bionic limbs can help amputees regain their independence, they do not fully restore function.
Nadia Ramahi/500px Prime via Getty Images

The future of regenerative medicine

Traumatic injury is one of the leading causes of death and disability in Americans. And limb loss from severe injury is the most frequent source of lifelong disability. These traumatic injuries are often caused by automobile accidents, athletic injury, side effects of metabolic diseases such as diabetes and even battlefield injuries.

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The possibility of decoding and awakening dormant signals that enable the body to regenerate parts of itself is a transformative frontier in medical science. Beyond regrowing lost limbs, regenerating heart tissue after a heart attack or brain tissue after a stroke could extend life and dramatically increase its quality. Our treatment is far from being ready to use in humans, and we only know that it works when applied immediately after injury. But uncovering and understanding the signals that allow cells to regenerate means that patients may not have to wait for scientists to really understand all the intricacies of how complex organs are constructed before they can get treated.

Making a person whole again means more than just replacing their limb. It also means restoring their sense of touch and ability to function. New approaches in regenerative medicine are now beginning to identify how that may be possible.The Conversation

Michael Levin, Professor of Biology, Tufts University; David Kaplan, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Tufts University, and Nirosha Murugan, Assistant Professor of Biology, Algoma University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, perhaps unleashing your fury on the science deniers – even if only those in denial cults who are destroying science and truth for the rest of us – that might help. I don’t know what else could.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Nov 082021
 

Yesterday, it was fairly quiet again. I had actually waited until morning to change the clocks, which I did when I got up, and also managed to change the newest one, which also shows date and temperature, from Centigrade to Fahrenheit. Let’s just say that was not intuitive. I know, it’s less scientific, but it’s more meaningful to me, being what I grew up with. And, because the degrees are closer together, it feels more accurate to me, although less scientifically useful.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Liz Cheney Brands Tucker Carlson ‘Un-American’ In Fox News Interview
Quote – “You know, it’s the same kind of thing that you hear from people who say that 9/11 was an inside job,” the Republican lawmaker said. “It’s un-American to be spreading those kinds of lies and they are lies. And we have an obligation that goes beyond partisanship, an obligation that we share — Democrats and Republicans together — to make sure that we understand every single piece of the facts about what happened that day and to make sure the people who did are held accountable.”
Click through for a video and a little more text. I realize Cheney msy have a personal interest in 9/11 not being a false flag – because if it were, her dad was involved. But she still gets some points for recognizing and avoiding hypocrisy.

AP News – Culture war fight finds mixed success in school board races
Quote – But across the country, culture and identity fights were less decisive. The political tracking website Ballotpedia identified 96 school districts in more than a dozen states where race education and masking were part of the debate. It found that at least one anti-critical race theory or anti-mask candidate prevailed in 35 of the 86 districts in which it has determined winners, or 40%. “Where they won, they won in really high numbers,” said Doug Kronaizl, a staff writer for Ballotpedia, noting that candidates who won on the issue tended to be concentrated in the same districts. “But overall nationwide they didn’t win that much.”
Click through for specificities. This is hish on my worries list. County, municipal, and school board elections here are “non-partisan,” as I suspect they are in most states. That sounds good, but in practice it means you have no idea for whom you are voting, and no way to find out how they think. And school boards, cities, and counties are where cndidates for state and federal office come from.

GWN (Good Word News) – The longest partial lunar eclipse of the century is coming: date, how to look
Quote – According to NASA, a three-hour, 28-minute partial lunar eclipse will take place on November 18 and 19 and people around the world will only have to walk outside to get a glimpse. Night watchers on the U.S. east coast will be able to watch the event from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. ET, according to NASA. Those on the West Coast can watch the sky between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. PT.
Click through for a bit of background. Midnight till 2 is actually not too bad a time for me, so I may actually be able to see this one. And it shouldn’t require sunglasses.

Food for Thought –

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