Science & Technology News

[GordMay]

Hyperbolic headlining, but I can certainly envision conservatives having a lot of fun with this one.

Another article, in the popular press, about the Study*.
“Do Psychedelic Trips Change Your Political Views?”
➥ https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywm4...olitical-views

The actual study:
“Psychedelics, Personality and Political Perspectives” ~ by Matthew M. Nour, Lisa Evans, and Robin L. Carhart-Harris
New research has found a positive association between psychedelic drug use and certain political orientations. The study, published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, found that psychedelic drug use was associated with liberal and libertarian (anti-authoritarian) political views, higher levels of openness to new experiences, and greater nature relatedness.
Importantly, the same associations did not exist between a person’s history of cocaine use, and their personality traits or political perspectives, showing that they are not simply associated with illicit drug use, but are more specific to psychedelics.
Nour warned that the study shouldn’t be misinterpreted as meaning that psychedelic drugs make people more liberal.
➥ https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprin...ctives_AAM.pdf
➥ https://www.psypost.org/2017/05/stud...-liberal-48966

Another study:
“Increased nature relatedness and decreased authoritarian political views after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression” ~ by Taylor Lyons and Robin L Carhart-Harris
➥ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6047302/

About Psilocybin and psilocin ("Magic mushrooms")
➥ https://www.canada.ca/en/health-cana...mushrooms.html

[GordMay]

Aerosols vs Droplets
UC Santa Barbara researchers Yanying Zhu and Lei Zhao hope to arm people with better knowledge of how SARS-CoV-2 spreads as the seasons change. Their new study* investigates the secret of this virus’s unusual success: its transmissibility, or how it manages to get from host to host. The dominant mode, it turns out, changes according to environmental conditions.
“We found that in most situations, respiratory droplets travel longer distances than the 6-foot social distance recommended by the CDC,” Zhu said. This effect is increased in the cooler and more humid environments to distances of up to 6 meters (19.7 feet) before falling to the ground in places such as walk-in refrigerators and coolers, where temperatures are low and humidity is high to keep fresh meat and produce from losing water in storage. In addition to its ability to travel farther, the virus is particularly persistent in cooler temperatures, remaining “infectious from several minutes to longer than a day in various environments,” according to several published studies.
More about ➥ https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2020/02006...ls-vs-droplets

* “COVID-19: Effects of Environmental Conditions on the Propagation of Respiratory Droplets” ~ Lei Zhao and Yanying Zhu
➥ https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c03331

[Singularity]

The putative mechanism by which psylobilin (and other psychedelics) has/have therapeutic benefit is to circumvent maladaptive neuro networks, enhancing pattern recognition skills (including paranoia/conspiracy-mindedness in some), routinely stripping away dogma in the process. At the same time, it's not a new idea that folks a few thousand years ago got high, wrote a book about it, then for thousands of years people have followed the same book as divinely inspired instead of...lung inspired mind-altering drugs (e.g. burning bushes). That the guardians of the book, and their politic, literally outlaw followers of the book from having the same altered experience is curious.

Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Arad
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/...nalCode=ytav20
On the smaller altar, residues of cannabinoids such as Δ9-teterahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN) were detected, along with an assortment of terpenes and terpenoids...The larger altar contained an assemblage of indicative triterpenes such as boswellic acid and norursatriene, which derives from frankincense. The additional presence of...testosterone, androstene and cholesterol―suggests that resin was mixed with it to facilitate evaporation. These well-preserved residues shed new light on the use of 8th century Arad altars and on incense offerings in Judah during the Iron Age.
---
Religious and spiritual experiences are neurologically similar to the euphoria of love and of drug-taking, a team of neuroscientists has concluded.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/morm...scientists-say
The team, led by a University of Utah neuroradiologist Jeffrey Anderson, found that in a group of 19 young [religious people], the same reward-based neural systems associated with drug-taking were activated when the individuals were “feeling the spirit”.

Reward, salience, and attentional networks are activated by religious experience in devout [ABCDEFG]
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1...9.2016.1257437

Survey of subjective "God encounter experiences": Comparisons among naturally occurring experiences and those occasioned by the classic psychedelics psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, or DMT
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478303/
More than two-thirds of those who identified as atheist before the experience no longer identified as atheist afterwards. These experiences were rated as among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant lifetime experiences, with moderate to strong persisting positive changes in life satisfaction, purpose, and meaning attributed to these experiences. Among the four groups of psychedelic users, the psilocybin and LSD groups were most similar and the ayahuasca group tended to have the highest rates of endorsing positive features and enduring consequences of the experience.

[GordMay]

... folks a few thousand years ago got high, wrote a book about it, then for thousands of years people have followed the same book as divinely inspired ...

“THE SACRED MUSHROOM AND THE CROSS"
A study of the nature and origins of Christianity within the fertility cults of the ancient Near East ~ by John M. Allegro
The book (pdf) ➥ https://www.ivantic.info/Ostale_knji..._the_Cross.pdf
About ➥ Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, 1970 - JohnAllegro.org

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Nour warned that the study shouldn’t be misinterpreted as meaning that psychedelic drugs make people more liberal.

Indeed. Correlation does not imply causation.

[GordMay]

Interim results from the Solidarity Therapeutics Trialindicate that remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon regimens appeared to have little or no effect on 28-day mortality or the in-hospital course of COVID-19 among hospitalized patients.
Press Release ➥ https://www.who.int/news/item/15-10-...in-record-time

A World Health Organization trial (“Solidarity”), using four drugs including Remdesivir, Hydroxychloroquine, Lopinavir and Interferon regimens, in the hospital treatment of COVID-19, has found the repurposed medicines have little to no effect on the length of time patients spend in hospital, or their survival, as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation, and duration of hospital stay.
“The unpromising overall findings from the regimens tested suffice to refute early hopes, based on smaller or non-randomized studies, that any will substantially reduce inpatient mortality, initiation of ventilation or hospitalisation duration,” the preliminary study found.

“Repurposed antiviral drugs for COVID-19; interim WHO SOLIDARITY trial results” ~ WHO Solidarity Trial Consortium,
Preprint ➥ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....15.20209817v1
And ➥ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....full.pdf+html

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by GordMay

...A World Health Organization trial (“Solidarity”)...has found the repurposed medicines have little to no effect on the length of time patients spend in hospital, or their survival, as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation, and duration of hospital stay.
“The unpromising overall findings from the regimens tested suffice to refute early hopes, based on smaller or non-randomized studies, that any will substantially reduce inpatient mortality, initiation of ventilation or hospitalisation duration,” the preliminary study found.

For context:
-biology across populations is not equal, while Solidarity utilized in randomized intention to treat analysis with frankly small populations in the study arms (maybe good enough for a p-factor, etc, but certainly small enough to qualify for Ioannidis' "why all studies are wrong" thing)
-Elephants in the room include Ford/Detroit finding improved survival with hydroxychloroquine (notably with more standard dosing/lower mg than in Solidarity) as have other studies found benefit of other listed meds

So when such studies have conflicting outcomes you'd tend to assume that someone screwed up, or someone is lying. Just as possible (and I suggest more likely) is that there are sub-group variables (including geography, ethnicity) playing a role that particularly gets completely lost in a small Solidarity-type trial. Perhaps to a layman the fact that Solidarity was done in so many countries seems to make it a "better" study...whereas in fact that they used frankly small population spread out all over the place with intention to treat analysis....sort of makes a crappy, or a marginal preliminary study.

In other words, causation is the sum of the correlations...there usually is no root cause. While some of this stuff is counter-intuitive it makes more sense the more you think about it. Quite frankly this is a realm where, if artificial intelligence like Dr. Watson were running things....AI can churn through the "sub-group variables and correlations"....where human number-crunchers frankly talk themselves out of all the necessary work that such analysis entails. BTDT...govt number crunches tend to take long lunches and start walking to there car at 4:55pm. As Obama said years ago...back in the 60s the smart kids went to NASA, nowadays they go to Wall Street. Look how Wall Street/Space-X is doing, look how the NASA/CDC/WHO is doing...

/rant

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Singularity

... Just as possible (and I suggest more likely) is that there are sub-group variables (including geography, ethnicity) playing a role that particularly gets completely lost in a small Solidarity-type trial. Perhaps to a layman the fact that Solidarity was done in so many countries seems to make it a "better" study...whereas in fact that they used frankly small population spread out all over the place with intention to treat analysis....sort of makes a crappy, or a marginal preliminary study...

I can't entirely discount your complaints, but note that this was, by far, the world's largest study (on this subject), to date.
RESULTS In 405 hospitals in 30 countries 11,266 adults were randomized, with 2750 allocated Remdesivir, 954 Hydroxychloroquine, 1411 Lopinavir, 651 Interferon plus Lopinavir, 1412 only Interferon, and 4088 no study drug.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by GordMay

I can't entirely discount your complaints, but note that this was, by far, the world's largest study (on this subject), to date.
RESULTS In 405 hospitals in 30 countries 11,266 adults were randomized, with 2750 allocated Remdesivir, 954 Hydroxychloroquine, 1411 Lopinavir, 651 Interferon plus Lopinavir, 1412 only Interferon, and 4088 no study drug.

"Largest" is really misleading. The cited Ford study, for example, looked at more hydroxychloroquine people, where again....listing all the countries really ought to cause one to thing "gee, I hope they got enough numbers in each country."

I cannot emphasize enough how biology is variable. Like go to the woods for a month and meditate upon the deep implications of evolution vs genetics and epigenetics kind of deal. This is silly to suggest, but I submit that most people look at biology like way too much like cause-effect. People don't understand that, for example, the same medication can be helpful for the same condition in 2 different sub-populations, but that the biochemical mechanisms by which it is helpful are not the same in both populations. This is not at all intuitive.

It's not that anyone has the upper-hand in smarts here, it's that we ordinarily discount/forget/ignore "in your face" examples of biologic diversity within species, where studies that look at the small cohorts listed above scattered all over the world...ought to be looked at as..."and just what are they trying to prove with that? Too few, too spread out."

[GordMay]

New model puts dollar value on ecological transformations driven by otters
After sea otters were hunted to near extinction by the maritime fur trade, they were reintroduced to the Pacific coast in the 1970s. Their rapid recovery and voracious appetite for tasty shellfish such as urchins, clams and crabs has brought them into conflict with coastal communities and fishers, who rely on the same valuable fisheries for food and income.
But the long-term benefits of thriving otter populations – such as healthier kelp forests, higher fish catches, carbon storage and tourism – could be worth as much as $53 million per year, according to new UBC research. If well-managed, these economic benefits could offset commercial losses to shellfish fisheries of $7 million per year.
The study, published in “Science”, is the first regional economic analysis of the costs and benefits of sea otter recovery along the west coast of Vancouver Island.
More ➥ https://news.ubc.ca/2020/06/11/recov...ts-than-costs/

“Cascading social-ecological costs and benefits triggered by a recovering keystone predator” ~ by Edward J. Gregr et al
"Human activities have fundamentally altered many ecosystems. Recent successful restoration efforts have led to healthier ecosystems, but this has led to a disruption in economies dependent on the altered state of the system. One of the best-known trophic cascades is the sea otter–kelp forest system, wherein recovery of once extirpated sea otters is bringing back biodiverse and healthy kelp forests but reducing the abundance of harvested shellfish. Gregr et al. looked at the costs and benefits of this shift and found that for key trade-offs, the value of kelp forest–associated features such as tourism, fin fish fisheries, and carbon capture outweighed the losses to economies (see the Perspective by Estes and Carswell). Thus, ecosystem recovery can benefit both ecosystems and economies..."
➥ https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6496/1243

[GordMay]

Deep sea coral reveal ancient CO2 burps
The fossilised remains of ancient deep-sea corals may act as time machines, providing new insights into the effect the ocean has on rising CO2 levels, according to new research carried out by the Universities of Bristol, St Andrews and Nanjing and published [16 October] in “Science Advances”.
Rising CO2 levels helped end the last ice age, but the cause of this CO2 rise has puzzled scientists for decades. Using geochemical fingerprinting of fossil corals, the team has found new evidence that this CO2 rise was linked to extremely rapid changes in ocean circulation, around Antarctica.
The data show that deep ocean circulation can change surprisingly rapidly, and that this can rapidly release CO2 to the atmosphere. Scientists have suspected that the Southern Ocean played an important role in ending the last ice age, and the team's findings add weight to this idea.

“Rapid shifts in circulation and biogeochemistry of the Southern Ocean during deglacial carbon cycle events” ~ by Tao Li et al
➥ https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/42/eabb3807

In another study published in "Nature Geoscience", this week, the same team ruled out recent speculation that the global increase in CO2, at the end of the ice age, may have been related to release of geological carbon, from deep sea sediments.

Although the rise in CO2, at the end of the ice age, was dramatic in geological terms, the recent rise in CO2 due to human activity is much bigger, faster, and scarier!
“Persistently well-ventilated intermediate-depth ocean through the last deglaciation” ~ by Tianyu Chen et al
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0638-6

[GordMay]

Are climate scientists being too cautious when linking extreme weather to climate change?
In a new paper, published in the October issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Dale Durran draws on the weather forecasting community's experience in predicting extreme weather events such as tornadoes, flash floods, high winds and winter storms. If forecasters send out a mistaken alert too often, people will start to ignore them. If they don't alert for severe events, people will get hurt. How can the atmospheric sciences community find the right balance?
The political will to incur any cost is highly dependent on stakeholder perceptions of the risks from anthropogenic climate change. At present, the American public’s perception of these risks is still influenced by binary yes–no answers to the basic question: was a given extreme weather event made more likely or more severe by climate change?

Even if scientists express their conclusions in probabilistic terms, the takeaway message conveyed to the public by the media is often simplified to “yes” or “no.”
One might argue that there are political considerations that should take precedence over the science. The damage done by severe weather is plainly obvious, whereas opinions about the severity of the threat from global warming are strongly linked to an individual’s political viewpoint. Political considerations are indeed important in any effort to enact policies to counter global warming, but they should not be conflated with science.

“Can the Issuance of Hazardous-Weather Warnings Inform the Attribution of Extreme Events to Climate Change?” ~ by Dale R. Durran
“When extreme weather occurs, the question often arises whether the event was produced by climate change. Two types of errors are possible when attempting to answer this question. One type of error is underestimating the role of climate change, thereby failing to properly alert the public and appropriately stimulate efforts at adaptation and mitigation. The second type of error is overestimating the role of climate change, thereby elevating climate anxiety and potentially derailing important public discussions with false alarms ...”
The paper concludes by noting:
"... If a forecaster fails to warn for a tornado there may be serious consequences and loss of life, but missing the forecast does not make next year's tornadoes more severe. On the other hand, every failure to alert the public about those extreme events actually influenced by global warming facilitates the illusion that mankind has time to delay the actions required to address the source of that warming. Because the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is many hundreds to thousands of years the cumulative consequences of such errors can have a very long lifetime."
➥ https://journals.ametsoc.org/bams/ar...ather-Warnings

[GordMay]

The Apollo 11 crew left more than just an American flag, footprints, and a legacy of indelible achievement in space exploration on the surface of the moon. According to New Mexico State University, they also left a commemorative plaque, a golden olive branch, and... oh yeah, a bunch of bags containing human waste. That's not the last of it however. In 2012, The Atlantic reported that there was over 400,000 pounds of human-made trash littering the surface on the moon, including 96 bags of human urine, feces, and vomit from the six Apollo landings.
"Apollo astronauts left their poop on the moon. We gotta go back for that sh*t."
What 50-year-old dirty diapers can teach us about the potential origins of life on Earth.
By Brian Resnick
➥ https://www.vox.com/science-and-heal...p-mars-science

“The Trash We've Left on the Moon” ~ by Megan Garber
The lunar surface is strewn with more than 100 manmade items, from bags of urine to monumental plaques.
➥ https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...e-moon/266465/

“Catalogue of Manmade Material on the Moon” ~ NASA History Program Office
➥ https://history.nasa.gov/FINAL%20Cat...the%20Moon.pdf

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by GordMay

In 2012, The Atlantic reported that there was over 400,000 pounds of human-made trash littering the surface on the moon, including 96 bags of human urine, feces, and vomit from the six Apollo landings.

Someone failed to fact-check. The total landing mass of a lunar lander was about 15 tonnes, most of which was consumable. That means the total mass brought to the moon by the Apollo program would have been less than half of what was reported, and some of that mass left the moon's surface. The 1-tonne descent stages were left behind as launch platforms, and they left behind tools, moon-buggies and such, but no more than a couple tonnes per mission.
If you roll in all of the other lunar probes, then we might start to approach this figure.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Lodesman

Someone failed to fact-check ...

Perhaps.
Evidently, the “Atlantic” story based their 400,000 Lbs estimate on a Wikipedia entry (to which they linked), which specifically did “not include lesser Apollo mission artificial objects, such as a hammer and other tools, retroreflectors, Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Packages, or the commemorative, artistic, and personal objects left by the twelve Apollo astronauts, such as the United States flags, the commemorative plaques attached to the ladders of the six Apollo Lunar Modules, the silver astronaut pin left by Alan Bean in honor of Clifton C. Williams whom he replaced, the Bible left by David Scott, the Fallen Astronaut statuette and memorial plaque placed by the crew of Apollo 15, the Apollo 11 goodwill messages disc, or the golf balls Alan Shepard hit during an Apollo 14 moonwalk.”
Due to your apparent subject knowledge, I’ll leave it to you, to fact check, or evaluate, the Wikipedia article.
List of artificial objects on the Moon ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
➥ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ts_on_the_Moon

The NASA List, to which I linked, did not include weights, just locations.