Week of August 14, 2023
August comes with a subtle urgency to spend time with the kids, and with our older son leaving for college, the pressure feels amplified. Even mundane events feel significant. Thus, I was surprisingly sentimental after an impromptu family YouTube 1980s music video party. I never expected to emotionally reconnect with spikey mullet cuts, neon spandex, and sleeveless jean jackets from Pat Benatar and Van Halen videos. Fortunately (with verbal cues and eye rolls), my kids remind me how lousy taste transcends time. Who knows what will happen when I watch MTV reruns without their commentary?
Planning for the empty nest and a guide for those that didn't grow up in the 80s:
How to Dress as an 80's Rock Star (ehow.com)
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Hospitalization rates and wastewater RNA concentrations continue to rise across the country.
The N.Y. Times COVID Tracker reflects the changing data quality - only CDC-gathered hospital data as a surrogate (lagging) indicator.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
Wastewater monitoring data is more of a LEADING indicator, though delayed by 7-10 days.
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COVID articles
Dr. Jeremy Faust (who publishes the Inside Medicine substack) started a COVID-tracking dashboard. The goal is to "collate, curate, and clean up the numbers from CDC and HHS datasets." He includes links to the source data, and the comments/questions at the bottom of the "About the dashboard" post are worth reading.
About his dashboard
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/new-the-inside-medicine-covid-19
See the dashboard
The University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) offers well-written summary articles on various topics. Recent research into coronavirus impact on mitochondria (the energy-generating portion of cells) is worth reading. I found three takeaway points. 1) COVID is very bad for many parts of the body. 2) The pandemic continues to drive understanding of fundamental biology. 3) I continue to wonder if other viruses can be as disruptive and destructive.
Research paper referenced
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abq1533
Medical Trends and Technology
I learned this week that Instacart has a health division. Very interesting and, at least on the surface, a huge opportunity to address food insecurity, nutrition, and many other food-wellness touch points.
https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/instacart-expands-health-division-provider-facing-tools
and
https://www.instacart.com/company/updates/introducing-instacart-health/
More evidence is emerging on the health benefits of GLP-1s, the family of molecule Semaglutide (brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) - initially developed for diabetes but most commonly used for weight loss (amongst other disease states). In this case, the drug manufacturer Novo Nordisk published data demonstrating significant cardiovascular benefits (reduced risk of heart attack and stroke) in patients using Semaglutide.
https://www.medscape.com/s/viewarticle/995348
Infographics
Revisit high school chemistry! Henderson and Hasselbalch welcome you to Compound Interest's Acid-Base infographic!
https://twitter.com/compoundchem/status/1689605426856267776/photo/1
Meet H&H. Henderson was quite accomplished.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Joseph_Henderson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Albert_Hasselbalch
Things I learned this week - Oddities from nature
Mosquitos and other parasites have a more challenging time biting hairier people. A 2012 paper tested this notion by recruiting 29 college students, having them shave part of one arm, and then applying bedbugs to both the shaven and unshaven arms. I recommend reviewing the paper since this study has many amusing aspects.
- The students were volunteers - 29 people chose to do this. Unclear what the compensation was.
- There is extensive discussion about informed consent regarding the risks and benefits of placing a bedbug on your arms.
- They used "laboratory grade" research bed bugs. I did not know these existed.
- They measured the time it took for the bedbug to begin its "pre-feeding" behavior, which means they measured how long the bedbug starts probing around with its proboscis before inserting it into volunteer flesh.
- It turns out that the more hair you have, the longer a bedbug spends "pre-feeding."
- They extrapolated that other parasites have similar difficulty penetrating the skin of mammals with body hair.
- Thus, they conclude that more hair is advantageous in avoiding parasitic bites.
I would love to have sat in on the consenting procedure and introduced the volunteers to laboratory-grade bedbugs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3367735/
There are statistics kept about otters attacking humans. Seriously. Sadly, a woman rafting in Oregon was the latest victim of an angry otter (she will be OK). Authorities were unclear about what triggers otters to violence. (Global warming? Politics? Human bathing suit fashions? Where do typical (or fringe) otters land on these issues?) The Oregon Capital Chronicle offers highlights the incident and addresses otter-related epidemiology. My conspiratorial mind notes that amongst 33 children's books about otters, there are no books in which otters are the villain. I can only conclude that the water-borne mammal lobby is shaping the messaging, focusing on "cute and fuzzy" over "temperamental with sharp teeth."
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/08/12/recent-otter-attack-in-montana-almost-unheard-of/
You can explore the bevy of one-sided, pro-otter books for our children here:
https://bookroo.com/explore/books/topics/otters
Living with A.I.
Nvidia's A.I. scientist Jim Fan observes the similarities in teaching A.I. and apes to play Minecraft.
https://twitter.com/drjimfan/status/1690041641514704896
If you have 25 minutes, watch the YouTube video of Minecraft gamer Chris DaCow teaching Kanzi the Bonobo (at the Ape Initiative in Iowa) to play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKpFoYqN9-0
Thanks to some of my work colleagues, I started taking classes offered through Google's free "Introduction to Generative A.I." course.
https://www.cloudskillsboost.google/course_templates/536
Although it is a bit self-promoting, I found the "Using A.I. to optimize flight paths and minimize airplane emissions (contrails)" article an excellent example of a real-world application of artificial intelligence.
https://blog.google/technology/ai/ai-airlines-contrails-climate-change/
A.I. art of the week
"A bed bug wearing neon spandex with a spiked mullet haircut, and playing the guitar, stuck in a carpet of hair."
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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