Week of October 30, 2023
The leaves are falling in earnest. Thanks to the numerous large, old black oak trees, our yard requires weekly grooming between October and December. Employing my two electric leaf blowers in tandem, I fight nature. I know entropy always wins, but Hemingway's words (from The Old Man and the Sea) float through my head, "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." Or at least that's what I tell myself.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/111352-but-man-is-not-made-for-defeat-he-said-a
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Hospitalization rates are falling. Wastewater RNA concentrations are stable. Combined with the anecdotal data I am seeing, it appears COVID is enjoying a more significant and persistent community spread than in the summer but less than the Delta or Omicron surges of Fall/Winter 2021-2022 or 2022-2023.
The N.Y. Times COVID Tracker reflects only CDC-gathered hospital data. Hospitalization data are a (lagging) indicator.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
Wastewater monitoring is more of a LEADING indicator.
The Inside Medicine COVID dashboard
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COVID articles
I strongly suggest getting the updated XBB Pfizer, Moderna, or Novavax COVID boosters. Yale offered an update to its consumer-friendly compare-and-contrast of the vaccines.
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-vaccine-comparison
and
https://twitter.com/Billius27/status/1718270918839914497
Every week, I see a large volume of "consequences of COVID" articles - both bench-top and population-level data indicating the long-term clinical impacts of coronavirus. I found the two studies cited below this past week. They are not perfect, but they demonstrate the volume and breadth of published research.
Researchers examined 18,000 Hong Kong healthcare system patients treated for prostate enlargement symptoms between 2021 and 2022. The study is a case-control, retrospective analysis. Half of the patients had had COVID (~9000). As compared to patients who had never had COVID, patients with a history of COVID infection had more and more severe symptoms of prostate enlargement (urinary retention, blood in the urine, urinary infection, and increasing medication doses).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.13719
Turkish researchers have demonstrated exposure to the coronavirus spike protein while in the womb alters rat's animal cognitive and social behavior after birth. "Prenatal SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Exposure Induces Autism-Like Neurobehavioral Changes in Male Neonatal Rats."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11481-023-10089-4
and more information:
https://x.com/vipintukur/status/1717888344611598529
Medical Trends and Technology
Dr. Jeremy Faust offered a thorough update on AI in healthcare, reviewing the latest studies and use cases.
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/ai-in-medicine-update
Many of my office patients report using supplements (at least in this respect, they are typical, I suppose). The supplement industry is unregulated. Over-the-counter (OTC) pills' ingredients, purity, and batch-to-batch consistency are not verifiable nor receive governmental oversight. Dr. Josh Trebach (E.R. and toxicology at the University of Iowa) offers a fantastic review of the supplement market through the lens of "gas station energy pills." (Hint from a doctor - don't use gas station energy pills).
https://twitter.com/jtrebach/status/1718272815827189797
Brazilian researchers have been working on a vaccine that generates antibodies that bind to cocaine, making users no longer able to feel high after ingestion (it makes the cocaine molecule so large it can't pass the blood-brain barrier). They won an innovation award from Europharma last week, which has spawned renewed media interest in this topic. Either way, this research demonstrates novel uses of the immune system. [I wonder if we will develop cocaine that can evade the antibodies? I bet Alpha Fold can help - see below.]
https://www.barrons.com/news/brazil-scientists-developing-new-vaccine-for-cocaine-addiction-4e70eca1
Infographics
I did not appreciate that biologists rank various animals by their hunting success. My backyard friend, the dragonfly, catches its prey 95% of the time (compared to polar bears at 10%).
from
https://www.ecoclimax.com/2021/03/the-deadliest-hunters-on-land-visualized.html
Things I learned this week
I am still working my way through this season's Revisionist History podcasts. A recent episode highlighted William Shockley - the silicone transistor's inventor, Silicon Valley's "founder," Nobel prize winner, and awful person. His story reminds me of Kay Jameson Redfield's 1996 book Touched by Fire - which looks at how mental illness played a role in the work of highly creative but deeply troubled artists.
https://omny.fm/shows/revisionist-history/silicon-valley-on-the-couch
and
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36434
We visited our son for his first college parent's weekend (or is it parents weekend or parents' weekend?). As always, the notion of ROI for the tuition runs through my head. John Burn-Murdoch (data and data visualization guy from the Financial Times) published a thorough look at higher education ROI in the U.K. versus elsewhere. His data suggests that British college students have decreasing ROI and higher than U.S. levels of higher education debt.
https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1718244492933816529
Living with A.I.
Alpha Fold is a Google subsidiary that develops neural network-based software aiding scientists in predicting the three-dimensional shape of proteins. It used to take years to do this work manually. Alpha Fold has allowed scientists to predict protein shapes rapidly and accurately. A few weeks ago, the Alpha Fold developers won the most prestigious science recognition in the United States, the Lasker Prize. Dr. Eric Topol offers a fantastic blog post reviewing the impact of this tool across a wide range of biology research.
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-new-precedentai-gets-the-american
Boston Dynamics (the dog and humanoid robot manufacturers) has incorporated ChatGPT voice chat into Spot (the dog). The dog now gives interactive tours of the company headquarters in formal British English. This development is totally normal and not unsettling at all, even when you find other articles about weaponizing Spot (with flamethrowers).
https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1717742045530312933
and
https://x.com/BrianRoemmele/status/1717745700803608587
and
You can experience Spot's chatting ability with ChatGPT mobile's (for iPhone and Android) voice chat mode. This functionality permits a conversation with the LLM (using a variety of very natural-sounding voices to reply).
https://twitter.com/Starhaven_ai/status/1717515827182772521
Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) has demonstrated using Spot as a retro-Victorian rickshaw-pulling beast of burden.
https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1718298946819268980
A.I. art of the week
The Riding Leaf Blower.
"Photo of a blueprint detailing a large leaf blower designed like a small tank. The leaf blower apparatus is mounted on a turret at the center of the tank. The design includes seating for a user to ride inside the turret, with controls to maneuver both the tank and the blower. The blueprint showcases various components and dimensions, highlighting key features such as the blower's nozzle, the tank's treads, and the turret's rotation mechanism. Annotations and labels provide clarity on the functionality of each part." I am unsure what language the annotations are in, but they appear authoritative.
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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