Week of December 16, 2024
In the spring of 1996, I spent four days listening to Dave Matthews CDs on repeat, preparing for my organic chemistry final. I remember the stress and intensity of those days with a kind of "intellectual wabi-sabi." Twenty-eight years later, I find beauty in the austere focus afforded by college "reading days." Last week, as my sons discussed the strain and anxiety of studying for and taking their college final exams, I was filled with empathy and jealousy. Having a few days of uninterrupted focus (even on organic chemistry) sounds fantastic.
https://www.omaritani.com/blog/wabi-sabi-philosophy-teachings
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Listen to a Google Notebook LM A.I.-generated podcast of the newsletter with two virtual "hosts."
There are pronunciation problems this week, but my AI hosts discuss the technical details with a surprising degree of competence and a total lack of self-awareness. (Listening to AI podcast hosts discuss how AI will replace humans is ironically entertaining.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B-xW_lZgUXiYnPi5VHAPNNI1YqO5yk7w/view
About NotebookLM: https://blog.google/technology/ai/notebooklm-audio-overviews/
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Science and Technology Trends
I found a fascinating article about the ramifications of genetically engineering organisms with mirror-image proteins. "All known life is homochiral [meaning all living organisms on earth have DNA and make proteins that have a consistent right-left orientation]. DNA and RNA consist of "right-handed" nucleotides and proteins are all "left-handed" amino acids. Driven by curiosity and plausible applications, some researchers [may attempt] to create lifeforms composed entirely of mirror-image biological molecules. Such mirror organisms would radically depart from known life, and their creation warrants careful consideration." The implications of such research are very Jurassic Park-esque (i.e., we can't control the consequences, and they are probably not good), and this editorial strongly suggests we should not create such organisms. I had Claude create a brief tutorial on chirality and summarize the article.
https://claude.site/artifacts/262497c3-cb19-4ef3-a669-96e071eaefba
and
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158
Nature Medicine looks at "2025 clinical trials to watch," including the first gene therapy for prion diseases and several AI tools for decision support and care interventions.
Summary table
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03383-y/tables/1
from the article:
that https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03383-y
I found this headline from the "bad data means bad data" department: "The secret to living to 110? Bad record-keeping." U.K. researchers looking at centenarians in so-called "blue zone" regions [areas of the world in which there are a disproportionate number of 100+-year-old individuals] found that the nations with the highest life expectancy at age 100 (including countries like Thailand, Kenya, and Malawi) ranked 212th and 202nd globally for life expectancy at birth and also included places unreliable birth records, such as Puerto Rico, (where pre-2010 birth certificates were invalidated due to issues like theft and forgery). These inconsistencies suggest widespread inaccuracies in age data, raising concerns about the reliability of widely published demographic statistics used in medicine, epidemiology, and public policy.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/secret-living-110-bad-record-011714810.html
and the original article
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.06.24313170v1.full
Anti- Anti-Science Articles of Note
While not perfectly aligned with the anti-science movement, the healthcare industry has seen an influx of private equity and venture capital firms (buying hospitals, medical practices, and medical technologies) over the last decade. Understanding the incentives and pressures of short-term, profit-driven entities in the life sciences is critical to understanding the frustration many patients and clinicians experience. This frustration partially explains the greater receptivity to "alternate" (i.e., less science-based) healthcare choices.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2024-in-review/the-gilded-age-of-medicine-is-here
and
https://lowninstitute.org/the-rising-danger-of-private-equity-in-healthcare/
Living with AI.
Google announced a breakthrough in quantum computing last week. There is a ton of skepticism in the I.T. world. Blockchain engineer, former Yahoo employee, and online professor (interpret those credentials as you will) Jeffery Scholz offered a thoughtful analysis and a good summary of quantum computing.
https://x.com/jeyffre/status/1866748799190004053
My current favorite podcast, the AI Daily Brief, offered an excellent episode exploring how AI-driven job shifting might play out. It is an 11-minute episode available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL2HBnX2EIo
And to ensure you have the skills not to be replaced by AI, Professor Ethan Mollock offered a fantastic blog post listing "15 types of tasks where AI can be especially useful, given current capabilities—and 5 scenarios where you should remain wary."
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/15-times-to-use-ai-and-5-not-to
Infographics
As you prepare for the holidays, don't forget your magic potion ingredients.
https://www.dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Potions-v-9-0-1-768x5000-1-scaled.jpg
from
https://www.selecta.com/int/en/stories/magic-potions
Things I learned this week
More articles with entertaining headlines: "Male humpback whale crossed 3 oceans for sex, inadvertently breaking distance record for species."
My thoughts:
- Who keeps records of the distances animals migrate for sex versus any other activity?
- If you read the article, you learn whales migrate large distances anyway. (Per three oceans is not such a big deal?)
- Ground News informs me that left-leaning media was far more likely to publish this story. Who knew there was a political dimension to whale sex?
https://ground.news/article/male-humpback-whale-crossed-3-oceans-for-sex-inadvertently-breaking-distance-record-for-species
"Female dogs evaluate levels of competence in humans. "Japanese scientists tested dogs exposed to two experimenters performing tasks to open containers: one successfully opened the container (Competent person), and the other failed (Incompetent person). The researchers then observed the dogs' behavior when both experimenters attempted to open a new container, either containing food or empty.” They observed:
Female dogs were more likely to approach and spend time observing the "Competent person" (more than the "Incompetent person') when the new container contained food. This behavior indicates that the dogs recognized competence and preferred it when there was potential for a reward.
When the container was empty, dogs did not show a preference for either experimenter, suggesting they knew a competent human was more likely to get them food.
Female dogs tended to evaluate and respond to human competence more than males.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037663572200170X?via%3Dihub
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/63312358
AI art of the week.
(This is a visual mashup of topics from the newsletter. I am now using ChatGPT to summarize the newsletter, suggest prompts, and make the images.)
This one took some tweaking, but I like the results.
"A dog is sitting on a sunny beach, looking judgmentally at a whale dressed in full 1970s disco style. The whale wears a sleek white leisure suit with wide lapels and a black shirt unbuttoned at the top, revealing a thick gold chain around its neck. The whale has a perfectly styled bouffant hairstyle positioned on top of its head, oversized sunglasses, and a large mustache, giving it a serious and suave appearance. The dog's expression remains intensely disapproving, with narrowed eyes and furrowed brows, as it stares judgmentally at the whale. Next to the whale is a suitcase and the background features soft waves, a bright sunny sky, and a vibrant beach setting."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l46uUaJFkHXAzyKalq1mThk-A7OSw-cx/view
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COVID rates are starting to trend upward again, as forecasted.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home
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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Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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