Week of November 4, 2024
Over the last two weekends, my wife and I experienced the inevitable comparisons of back-to-back college parents' weekends. Both colleges offered parent-themed lectures and panels hosted by moderately famous professors discussing topics like A.I. ethics and discrimination in the U.S. justice system. Both featured speeches by college leadership espousing their institutions' traditions, vision, and values. But only one had a community fair with a giant inflatable colon on the quad (to raise awareness for cancer screening - see last week's What Adam is Reading), and the other catered with Wawa, a regional gas station/convenience food chain. Even the most erudite academics are still human, at risk for age-related diseases, who (seem to) enjoy single-serving, plastic-wrapped blueberry muffins.
Professors I heard speak:
https://www.haverford.edu/college-communications/news/faculty-focus-shibulal-family-associate-professor-computer-science
and
https://www.nicolevancleve.com/bio
And last week's issue where I wrote about inflatable organs
http://www.whatadamisreading.com/2024/10/what-adam-is-reading-week-of-10-28-24.html
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This week's Google NotebookLM A.I.-generated podcast with two "hosts” was a little too upbeat about the prevalence of COVID (only 1 in 123!) but captured the rest of the articles well. The last few minutes, which include random riffing and effusive compliments of my writing, are amusing.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FHWxScNEyNBTDuKYDutEpW8lCEirfNr3/view?usp=sharing
About NotebookLM: https://blog.google/technology/ai/notebooklm-audio-overviews/
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Wastewater data indicates the U.S. prevalence of COVID is down to 1 in 123 individuals, the lowest November infection rate since 2020. For reference, the typical Southwest 737-800 holds about 180 people, meaning that on any plane trip, 1 person (on average) may be infected.
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) website uses wastewater levels to forecast 4-week predictions of COVID rates.
https://pmc19.com/data/
based upon https://biobot.io/data/
Wastewater Scan offers a multi-organism wastewater dashboard with an excellent visual display of individual treatment plant-level data.
https://data.wastewaterscan.org/
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Infectious Disease Articles
I am still watching the H5N1 avian flu reports. Now, cows and pigs (living on farms with sick birds) are testing positive for this flu variant. USDA scientists (who are testing the animals found to have a + flu nasal swab) need more data (from an autopsy of the pigs) to determine if the H5N1 virus had infected respiratory tissue or was present due to environmental exposure.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/usda-announces-first-h5n1-avian-flu-detection-us-pigs
I would have liked to hear this panel from the Harvard School of Public Health discuss practical lessons learned from the pandemic. It includes Joseph Allen, the lead of Healthy Buildings and an environmental sciences professor who has written extensively about air movement and building ventilation.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/next-pandemic-not-if-but-when/
Medical Trends and Technology
Science published a fantastic overview of the "science of misinformation." I did not realize the amount of academic work dedicated to understanding epistemological questions such as "What is misinformation?" "How do you measure its impact?" and "How do you work in this space when so much data is in the hands of privately owned social media sources?" I strongly recommend reading this article.
https://www.science.org/content/article/five-biggest-challenges-facing-misinformation-researchers
The positive data on semaglutide (Ozempic) keeps accumulating. Note that the manufacturer funded this study (meaning they are looking for clinical justification for expanding the indications for use). However, arthritis is typically a barrier to my patients exercising routinely.
"Among participants with obesity and knee osteoarthritis with moderate-to-severe pain, treatment with once-weekly injectable semaglutide resulted in significantly greater reductions in body weight and pain related to knee osteoarthritis than placebo."
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2403664
Another study from a few weeks back (indicating that, again, weight loss seems to be the primary variable yielding improvements in underlying disease) demonstrated that "semaglutide treatment for 24 weeks resulted in a clinically meaningful reduction in [urinary protein leakage] in patients with overweight/obesity and non-diabetic kidney disease."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03327-6
Infographics
I've had several conversations about the words for units of time. I now know a jiffy is measurable.
https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1852976506370462131/photo/1
This infographic about hardware made my juvenile brain laugh.
https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1853110328084533531/photo/1
Things I learned this week
It was a good week for random science about animals.
I am so grateful someone is fact-checking long-standing aphorisms. "Two Australian mathematicians have called into question the adage, 'that if given an infinite amount of time, a monkey pressing keys on a typewriter would eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare.'
[… A] new peer-reviewed study led by Sydney-based researchers Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare's plays, sonnets, and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748kmvwyv9o
Angry birds may be more spiteful than angry. The New York Times published this excellent piece on the science of multi-generational crow murders (the collective noun, not killing) sustaining decades-long grudges against specific people or objects. The article makes crows sound a bit Shakespearean (but we can rest assured that (per the previous article) monkeys would not accidentally write this story).
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/science/crows-grudges-revenge.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I now know Russians put frogs in milk to keep it fresh. I learned that the Russian brown frogs secret hundreds of antimicrobial peptides that stem the growth of milk-spoiling bacteria.
https://www.acs.org/pressroom/presspacs/2013/acs-presspac-february-6-2013/frog-in-bucket-of-milk-folklore-leads-to-potential-new-antibiotics.html
and
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/pr300890m
I will close out with this 2013 article: "Dolphins Seem to Use Toxic Pufferfish to Get High." While the article says it may be more of a hallucinogen, the dolphins are observed "passing around the puffer fish" (which sounds like a euphemism from a bad Cheech and Chong movie).
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-use-toxic-pufferfish-to-get-high-180948219/
and
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/dolphin-facts-puffer-fish-high-b1847115.html
Living with A.I.
The A.P. offered a thoughtful article on the problems of A.I. hallucinations in medical records, audio-to-text transcripts, and generated text. It is an important reminder to carefully review your AI-generated and AI-summarized materials.
https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14
A new startup uses gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and AI-driven analysis to create digital 'scent fingerprints.' The company essentially stores and "prints" odors using scent libraries. Not only do I see a market for programmable aromatherapy devices, but my ongoing obsession with COVID-sniffing dogs can now be realized as a centralized, scaled operation - hundreds of dogs sniffing remotely transmitted samples from anywhere in the world. Welcome to the world of digital olfaction. (Yes, if you can analyze a scent, you may not need the dogs, but the vision of a large-scale centralized sniffing enterprise is entertaining.)
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/osmo-leads-fragrance-innovation-with-ai-powered-molecular-discovery-302288001.html
And
https://x.com/rowancheung/status/1852025484575408529
And
https://www.osmo.ai/about
A.I. art of the week (A visual mashup of topics from the newsletter).
What I asked for:
"A Botticelli-style painting of a table with a monkey typing on a typewriter, a very angry-looking crow, a brown frog, and a dolphin with a puffer fish in its mouth sitting at a Vegas-style blackjack table with a robot dealing cards and offering a glass of liquid to sniff."
What was generated:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VAwWHI2muqWoIobWOesaqh8S6kST6IyH/view
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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