Science 2.0

A recent study revealed how the SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S)-protein interacts with human Estrogen Receptor Alpha (ERα) in lung tissue, which may increase the pro-coagulation activity of endothelial cells, enhancing the risk of thrombosis and shedding new light on the pathogenic mechanisms underlying SARS-CoV-2 infection and on its sex-specific differences.

The authors say it may also lead to the severe coagulopathy observed in some people receiving the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. 

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Calculating how many lives have been lost in the COVID-19 pandemic will be valuable for future epidemiological and policy decisions - in many cases telling the public what we should not do. A murder victim who had a positive test within 30 days of being shot was counted as a COVID-related death, and that didn't inspire confidence. 

But Americans only know about that because there some effort at transparency. Elsewhere, governments claimed whatever they wanted to claim. China, the home of SARS-CoV-2 and the pandemic that resulted, first claimed they had ended their pandemic at 4,000 deaths while citizens reported crematoriums running 24 hours per day across the country.

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That's the title of a short article I just published (it is online here, but beware - for now you need to access from an institution that can access the journal contents), on Nuclear Instruments and Methods - a renowned journal for particle physics and nuclear physics instrumentation. The contents are nothing very new, in the sense that they are little more than a summary of things that the MODE collaboration published last March here. But for the distracted among you, I will summarize the summary below.

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Microtransactions in games don't really bother me. If it's taking away something tedious or just letting game players do something faster, no big deal. 

Yet imagine you paid a small fortune, probably at a premium since flag-waving capitalists running car companies make sure government won't let you buy a car without a dealer (car dealers love socialism when it makes them rich) only to find out your fancy electric car has features - like acceleration - that some grifter didn't tell you would cost another $1,200 per year. 

Welcome to Mercedes Microtransactions.

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People talk about how couples in trouble may be experiencing the seven-year itch. The rock band The Clash sings ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ It’s clear that some couples separate at this point in their relationships, while others work on staying together and remain partners for years.

You would think that the longer a couple has stayed together, the closer they would feel towards each other. And if there is such a thing as the seven-year itch, that would mean that couples reach bottom in their relationship at about this time. But does research provide any evidence that this is actually the case?

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Very few people are average, that is the problem with using population level statistics in a clinical environment, and why few do it.

Yet a population can show what questions to ask, like if there are racial differences in outcomes and why. A recent analysis in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society included data on 2,918 patients aged 75 years or older who were hospitalized for heart attacks at 94 US hospitals from 2013–2016.

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Atopic dermatitis (AD), also called atopic eczema, is a common, chronic, recurrent, inflammatory disorder of the skin which affects 5 percent of children worldwide and perhaps more.

Moisturizers bring some relief but studies from PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane library identified relevant studies from their inception through 28 February, 2022 and the systematic review and network meta-analysis of 11 randomized controlled trials involving 3,483 infants found that they can also prevent eczema in high-risk infants.  They evaluated the quality of eligible studies using the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool. Data analysis was performed using STATA 14.0.

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And back at home, Congressman John Curtis (R Utah) tells National Public Radio that the “conservative climate caucus,” which he chairs, seeks climate solutions that “don’t demonize fossil fuels.”*

Now, as many of you know, I’m a political centrist at heart, but because the country has drifted so far to the right, I’ve resolved to be a knee-jerk leftist – a flaming liberal, a yellow dog Democrat – until things come back into balance.

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Count the times the word “culture” came out of reporters’ mouths last week, and you’d think they were anthropologists. Usually in this context: “The culture of white supremacy has gone fully mainstream.* “The bedrock idea uniting right-wing communities…  is that white Christian men in the United States are under cultural and demographic threat.”**

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NASA is really excited they can fly a spacecraft near the moon. This seems odd, since they did a flyby nearly 60 years ago, as preparation for the moon landing in 1969.

Now, some people think the moon landing never happened, just like some people believe organic red wine is good for you or that solar power is a viable option source of energy for more than 0.6% of us.


In all cases they can point to strange government writings as circumstantial proof, and the moon hoax fringe has to be as giddy as NASA is about Artemis. 

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If you’ve drunk the MBA kool-aid, you believe VCs and M&A bean-counters rationally price their investments. If an honest professor has confessed to you that company valuation is a black art, i.e., that there’s a heavy dose of intuition involved, you’ve been ahead of the game. The Twitter cockup now shows valuation to be a total dice-roll. 

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Migraine is a common condition, involving a severe recurring headache but sometimes nausea, weakness and light sensitivity as well. According to the American Migraine Foundation, over 37 million people in the U.S. report being affected by migraine, though only 148 million people worldwide report suffering from it.

Perivascular spaces are fluid-filled spaces surrounding blood vessels in the brain. They are most commonly located in the basal ganglia and white matter of the cerebrum, and along the optic tract. Perivascular spaces are affected by several factors, including abnormalities at the blood-brain barrier and inflammation. Enlarged perivascular spaces can be a signal of underlying small vessel disease.

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With the population at 8 billion and on its way to 10, there is renewed concern about resources, but water? Yes, though the percentage of the world's water that is potable can be counted on one hand many countries don't have access to oceans. And if Europe forces developing nations to obey European laws on water like they do energy and food, poor countries will never be able to create centralized water services.

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Elite performance takes natural ability coupled with elite levels of training. That last part has an effect later in life, according to a new analysis. It found that one in four retired Olympians have some level of osteoarthritis, which causes changes in the joint and can lead to discomfort, pain and disability.

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Welcome to modern colonialism. Literally, the parents of a wealthy cryptocurrency grifter got handed an expensive residence in the Bahamas once inhabited by plantation owners. And now the two Stanford law professors are going to have to try to hide behind age and confusion as to why they didn't see anything wrong with that.

Like the guy who ran WeWork, Sam Bankman-Fried used all the right buzzwords when raising money, and there is no more effective term to make wealthy elites squee in 2022 than "effective altruism." Like "smurf", it can mean anything you want it to mean. Like $300 million in homes for friends and family while $10 billion in customer assets are in some fantasy universe.

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A new study finds cholesterol makes no meaningful difference in your health. Who knew?
Well, everyone. Because it lacked a biological explanation, it was instead looking at a statistical risk factor for a risk factor and telling people to stop eating meat, butter, and eggs.

And yet government and doctors have abdicated critical thinking to epidemiology to such an extent they'll believe anything if someone declares statistical significance. Which they did here, and cost consumers a trillion dollars while doing...nothing.

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Without the Colorado River Compact, an agreement to share water signed 100 years ago this week, there is no Hoover Dam, and cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, and Phoenix would be drastically different.

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It's no secret that California is having a crisis of confidence. Water is too expensive and too scarce but politicians jammed through the implosion of four more dams anyway, while energy costs are high due to solar and wind subsidies. The state refused to pay for schooling for poor kids but is saying that college graduates who get their student loans waived won't have to pay taxes. While the state has a $25 billion deficit this year. It turns out that people selling stocks in a bad economy and paying capital gains taxes is not a business mode.

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The worst-kept secret in student loans is not that the same party now wanting to force the rest of us to pay them off put unlimited student loans into law in the first place, nor that wiping out loans will never survive court challenges and was always a political stunt, but that the biggest beneficiaries, proponents, and defenders are and have always been universities.

With loans unlimited, so are salaries and buildings and administrators. And grifts.

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It is sort of forgivable if the wacky head of the Crossfit company claims Coca-Cola causes diabetes because at least it has calories. And if you consume too many calories, be it in the form of Coca-Cola or salad, you will get fat. And being obese is the number one risk factor for Type 2 diabetes.

But light?

Welcome to epidemiology, where anything can be linked to anything and, if you can claim statistical significance, turn it into a paper you hope science will one day show to be true. 

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