Sequencer | The Sick Times
As the factors that drive outbreaks snowball and Trump dismantles public health institutions, preparedness can come from the ground up.
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Tag Archives: Science
Tell me what you don’t know
Sequencer
Scientific misinformation is a community problem. We can fight back by embracing uncertainty.
Twenty-five floors above the clouds of indoor cigarette smoke at the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, hundreds of self-described “skeptics” gathered to discuss science, health, and paranormal claims. But far from conspiracy thinking, this group organized by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry defines skepticism as questioning facts in good faith. They arrived to learn how to recognize and combat misinformation. And ten days before the 2024 presidential election, I traveled to their Las Vegas conference as a science reporter with a similar goal.
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These Newly Identified Cells Could Change the Face of Plastic Surgery
WIRED
Cartilage cells that contain fat explain why some skeletal tissues are less rigid than others, and could one day be grown in labs to produce better materials for performing reconstructive surgeries.
Nobody is making chocolate like this
Sequencer
What happens when you turn cacao into a microbiology experiment? Some damn good chocolate.
To say you “like chocolate” means almost nothing. There are people for whom chocolate means the rich soup of microwaved Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food; some gravitate to the syrupy bite of Hershey’s and others refuse to call Hershey’s “real” chocolate; there are the Lindt Lovers, Ferrero Rocher Freaks, and organic-bean-to-bar-fair-trade fans and stans. And then there’s Seamus Blackley, a physicist by training who didn’t think much about chocolate until he and mechanical engineer Asher Sefami began growing cacao trees in a secret lab just east of Los Angeles.
I tried to train my color vision. Here’s what happened.
Sequencer
When I gamified my color blindness, I stumbled into the limits and latitudes of neuroplasticity.
One afternoon during my PhD, I took a break from lab work to snack on a banana. I grabbed a seat in the office, slid off my headphones, and peeled open my treat. Just as I bit in, I noticed a labmate staring at me.
“Max,” she told me, holding back some laughter. “That banana is a 4.”
I instantly knew what she meant because I’d made this mistake before. The banana was days from being ripe, and I had misjudged the color. A laughably green banana.
Even before I knew that I had mild deuteranomaly (so-called red-green colorblindness), I struggled with cryptic color schemes on spreadsheets and graphs. Whether in spite or because of this, color theory fascinated me. I had neurological, practical, and philosophical questions. Why do we call the retina’s longest wavelength cone “red” when it actually best absorbs yellow-green light? Why does mixing paint obey different rules than mixing light? If I could see through your eyes, would your mental images match mine — does your blue match my blue? And I had questions that blended all three, like what the hell is brown???
The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology
QUANTA MAGAZINE
Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators, collect pollen and more. New experiments explore how evolution may have influenced this phenomenon.
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a honeybee. In many ways, your world is small. Your four delicate wings, each less than a centimeter long, transport your half-gram body through looming landscapes full of giant animals and plants. In other ways, your world is expansive, even grand. Your five eyes see colors and patterns that humans can’t, and your multisensory antennae detect odors from distant flowers.
For years, biologists have wondered whether bees have another grand sense that we lack. The static electricity they accumulate by flying — similar to the charge generated when you shuffle across carpet in thick socks — could be potent enough for them to sense and influence surrounding objects through the air.
With ‘Digital Twins,’ The Doctor Will See You Now
Quanta Magazine
By creating a digital twin of your circulatory system, Amanda Randles wants to bring unprecedented precision to medical forecasts.
Amanda Randles wants to copy your body. If the computer scientist had her way, she’d have enough data — and processing power — to effectively clone you on her computer, run the clock forward, and see what your coronary arteries or red blood cells might do in a week. Fully personalized medical simulations, or “digital twins,” are still beyond our abilities, but Randles has pioneered computer models of blood flow over long durations that are already helping doctors noninvasively diagnose and treat diseases.
The drugs of the future are in the animals of the past
SEQUENCER
The genomes of extinct creatures like mammoths and giant sloths code for natural antibiotics we’ve never seen. So, now what?
César de la Fuente’s lab has a knack for finding antibiotics in usual places. He doesn’t trudge through swamps or remote forests like a pharmacological Indiana Jones. His lab instead combs through genetic data collected from creatures across all time.
In just the last few years, they’ve documented unreported antimicrobial compounds hidden in the genomes of Neanderthals, the world’s microbes, and within ourselves. Now, their latest feat carries the torch thanks to a brand new machine learning algorithm they call APEX: antibiotic peptide de-extinction.
An evolving answer to excess sweating
Drug Discovery News
The cause of hyperhidrosis, an excessive sweating condition, is enigmatic, but treatment options are plentiful and growing.
Don’t step on this caterpillar
SEQUENCER
A Brazilian research institute is the only thing standing between a caterpillar sting and an untimely, grisly death.
In the 1990s, an unlikely culprit sparked an outbreak in southern Brazil. People poured into clinics with severe bruises and mysterious, gangrene-like symptoms. Some patients even suffered brain bleeds and died. The cases initially baffled researchers, who investigated patients’ accounts by probing the surrounding lands and trails. Site after site, they found Lonomia obliqua larvae: two-inch caterpillars with cactus-like spines out of their greenish brown bodies.
You don’t want to mess with Lonomia obliqua’s prickly prepubescent hairs. If you touch or step on its clumps of spines, venom trickles into your bloodstream, carrying with it procoagulants that spread clots across your body. The venom can deplete your blood’s ability to clot when you actually need it, heightening the risk for internal bleeding and hemorrhage. Lonomia caterpillars cause painful, bloody deaths.
Brazilian officials recorded 600 stings between 1989 and 1996, including 12 deaths, cementing L. obliqua’s place as the world’s deadliest caterpillar. The situation has only gotten more dire: between 2007 and 2017, researchers documented more than 42,000 stings and roughly 250 serious poisonings—only now, there’s an antidote.
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Max G. Levy 