Those Pesky Little PM2.5 Critters? So why is the epidemic spreading so quickly in New York? Could it be air pollution? We know, especially from research into the severe air pollution in China that the particles in smog carry pathogenic microbes, including both bacteria and viruses (Inhalable Microorganisms in Beijing’s PM2.5 and PM10 Pollutants dur...
“They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Talleyrand Didn’t we learn anything from SARS, MERS and H1N1 and its variants? “The more things change, the more they remain the same”. Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr “To ignore history is to repeat it” George Santayana You get the idea. Doing Nothing Beats AI So here I was thinking that AI had fina...
Obesity is the new abnormal Did you notice the latest gloomy news on obesity? Namely, that on current predictions half of all adults in the US will be clinically obese by 2030. There’s even worse too; one quarter of all adults will be severely obese. That means they are at least 100 lbs. over their ideal body weight and experiencing conditions such...
One of the benefits of living in a rich country is that you get a lot of high quality, nutritious food. As nations become more highly developed, they eat a lot more meat, which, as we know is nutritious and particularly high in protein. Even though there’s a bit of a trend towards a plant-based diet, the mega-trend is to eat more protein, not just ...
The Plaque Obsession I’ve been really concerned about the lack of progress on Alzheimer’s. So in early 2018 I posted on the topic (“We urgently need a Manhattan Project for Alzheimer's!” 13 January, 2018). In my post I pointed out the research into the disease wasn’t working out because it was concerned only with amyloid plaque, that none of the dr...
I just watched a Netflix documentary called "The Game Changers". Its about how meat damages your body. As if we needed another bad health story. I don’t have to tell you that vaping is in the news. Now we know that it does major damage to your lungs in the longer-term, albeit not as bad as tobacco. How about this meat thing though? You know, all t...
Yep, I know, this topic is way too out there to even consider. Whatever. There’s so much news now about black holes, gravitational waves and the like that you just can’t help thinking of weird stuff, right? After all, newspapers (the few left, that is) still publish horoscopes and millions of apparently sane people believe implicitly in them. Aren’...
So, measles is getting out of control again. Ebola is already out of control. All those diseases of childhood are making a return in some shape or form, like measles and chicken pox, even polio. Antibiotic resistant bugs are getting nastier. The cognoscenti is already parsing the meaning of the post-antibiotic era. Meanwhile the latest drugs for Al...
Stem cells are hot! They are being touted for being able to cure just about everything. Even off-the-shelf cures for cancer! There’s a lot of quack remedies out there. On the other hand, stem cells are real and so is their potential to do good things for humans. Is there some thing we can do to help these good guys along? Well, first a couple of fa...
You can’t read anything these days without finding articles on how you gotta exercise. And it’s true. Exercise has enormous benefits, physical, mental, cognitive and so on. If you exercise you get all these massive benefits for free. So what’s not to like? Well clearly many people no like. The CDC estimates that only 20% of the population meet its ...
Just saw an article that claims that e-cigarettes help people quit smoking. They were, it was reported, twice as effective as gum or patches. Beautiful right? But what about the fact that these people didn’t quit imbibing nicotine? They just switched to another method which is less likely to give them lung cancer. This study by the way was publishe...
I posted on Alzheimer’s early last year (“We urgently need a Manhattan Project for Alzheimer's!”). My thesis was that we needed more out-of-the-box thinking. So far there’s no public hints of that happening either in the scientific community or the NIH. (OK, flash release: interesting research linking gum disease with Alzheimer’s, but still way too...
You might have associated UK Prime Minister Teresa May with BREXIT. But she has another distinction. She appointed the first Minister for Loneliness ever in the UK early in 2018. At the time I thought it was a weird idea. That shows you how little I know. The current fashionable buzz is about living alone and loneliness. The concern is that living ...
Science says you can be 30 years younger, read on! As a runner I keep my eyes out for uplifting articles on the effects of exercise. So recently I was greatly uplifted by this one: “Regular Exercise May Keep Your Body 30 Years ‘Younger”. And no, it wasn’t an ad, it was published in August in the Journal of Applied Physiology, by researchers at Ball...
In the category of believe it or not: “Zoo Weans Animals Off Fruit Because Its Increased Sugar Makes Them Fat and Rots Their Teeth” . BTW the zoo is in Melbourne, Australia. Are these Aussies crazy politically correct, or just plain crazy? Full disclosure: I’m a card (viz. passport) -carrying Australian. As in Fosters, Australian for beer. G’ day ...
It's estimated that 20% of Americans have a mental disorder of some kind; BTW that’s 44 million people. Around 70% of youth in juvenile justice systems have at least one mental disorder and at least 20% live with a serious mental illness. Another 20% of State prisoners has mental disorder. Nearly 1 in 2 people – that’s all of us now - will suffer f...
If you’re a teen, or even a tween, not to mention over the hill in your 20s, you will know that vaping is cool; in fact way cool dude. The King of the Hill in this neck of the cottonfields is Juul, the maker of the market-leading e-cigarette. Of course, it was too good to last. The spoilsports in the FDA not to mention States legal eagles are conc...
Facial recognition is hot now. The software is now so good it’s being used for crime prevention and apprehension by law agencies. This is leading to a revolution in law and order as we speak. Did you see the research that links particular types of wrinkles to heart disease? Apparently, these wrinkles are a good predictor. So, what I’m wondering is ...
I’m sure you noticed the recent report about drinking alcohol. It’s based on an article in the Lancet, the British medical journal. Its well-known to be an authoritative source so that gives the report a high level of street cred. In sum, the article concludes that there’s no safe level of alcohol. No matter how little you drink, it carries a defin...
Yep I know that I’m raising yet another hair-(sorry) brained idea, but consider it wishful thinking on the part of a hair-deficient yet hopeful male (viz. me). My idea is that climate change will make males like me hairier. That’s why so many males don’t care about – indeed heartily wish for – climate change; the more the merrier. What evidence, yo...
