Dr Ben

Some more good nerdy stuff.

My oldest is really good at math, and my fatherly guidance was for him to get into Materials Science or Battery Tech.

He didn't.

And this is how we come to blame our kids for our problems instead of looking to our own bad selves for not taking our own advice.

Or something.

Wild Thoughts

I hate thinking I'm falling into a stream of thought that follows a pattern that may well be valid, but may certainly be just a product of several thousand generations of evolutionary training to look for those patterns, and to assume they're the real deal.

Here's a story of the Chaco Canyon civilization which concludes that high-handed theocratic rulers will become literal cannibals in order to impose their will on the people they rule.

And also maybe too - the leaders ate people thinking they could absorb the essence of their victims so they can extend their own lives as well as the power they hold over their subjects. (Nothing new about that, BTW)

At the end of this piece, try not to think about the grisly possibility that American plutocrats may actually have butchered young children, and eaten parts of them, or used parts of them to concoct some stupidly contrived tonic - or serum - or some goddamned thing.

A Nerdy Thing

AI will never replicate this.

A Nerdy Thing

Today's Nerd Thing

This kinda Star Trek shit makes my head buzz.

OK, so first it makes my head hurt, but that goes away after a bit, and then I get the buzz.

Happy now?

Look, it's good to get a Physics For Dummies explanation, but I'm the guy who struggles with a credit card statement, so all the math and science stuff always ends in "it's wonderment".

I'm just glad to know there are people in the world who are working on it for me.

Thank you, nerds.

Today's Nerdy Thing

We have to have this kinda thing going on. I don't know if there was much government funding, but it's McGill University in Montreal, so yeah, probably. Canadians are still pretty normal, in that they're willing to do it right, letting the nerds do what they need to do to get us good and useful stuff.

Today's Nerdy Thing

This is like the opening sequence of a sci-fi movie.

Today's Nerdy Thing

Quote

I am far less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than I am in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

--Stephen Jay Gould

Almost Half A Century

Voyager 1

Quite possibly the last time anything built

in USAmerica Inc was still working

after 48 years of continuous use.

Calling Dr Kennedy

Quick - somebody get hold of BKjr and tell him those evil science nerds are trying to inject heavy metals directly into our brains!

Research on reversing Alzheimer’s reveals lithium as potential key

Years of investigation by scientists at Harvard has revealed that lithium is deeply involved in Alzheimer’s disease, a finding that could lead to new treatments.

Seven years of investigation by scientists at Harvard Medical School has revealed that the loss of the metal lithium plays a powerful role in Alzheimer’s disease, a finding that could lead to earlier detection, new treatments and a broader understanding of how the brain ages.

Researchers led by Bruce A. Yankner, a professor of genetics and neurology at Harvard Medical School, reported that they were able to reverse the disease in mice and restore brain function with small amounts of the compound lithium orotate, enough to mimic the metal’s natural level in the brain. Their study appeared Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“The obvious impact is that because lithium orotate is dirt cheap, hopefully we will get rigorous, randomized trials testing this very, very quickly,” said Matt Kaeberlein, former director of the Healthy Aging and Longevity Research Institute at the University of Washington, who did not participate in the study. “And I would say that it will be an embarrassment to the Alzheimer’s clinical community if that doesn’t happen right away.”

Cue the private equity assholes to buy up all the lithium rights - can't have affordable healthcare now can we.

Yankner, who is also the co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard, said: “I do not recommend that people take lithium at this point, because it has not been validated as a treatment in humans. We always have to be cautious because things can change as you go from mice to humans.” He added that the findings still need to be validated by other labs.

Although there have been recent breakthroughs in the treatment of Alzheimer’s, no medication has succeeded in stopping or reversing the disease that afflicts more than 7 million Americans, a number projected to reach almost 13 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Pathology images from the brain of an Alzheimer's mouse model. The images show that when the mice are treated with a very low dose of lithium orotate, it almost completely eradicates the amyloid plaques and the tau tangle-like structures. (Harvard)

Lithium is widely prescribed for patients with bipolar disorder, and previous research indicated that it held potential as an Alzheimer’s treatment and an antiaging medication. A 2017 study in Denmark suggested the presence of lithium in drinking water might be associated with a lower incidence of dementia.

However, the new work is the first to describe the specific roles that lithium plays in the brain, its influence on all of the brain’s major cell types and the effect that its deficiency later in life has on aging.

Results of the study by Yankner’s lab and researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago also suggest that measuring lithium levels might help doctors screen people for signs of Alzheimer’s years before the first symptoms begin to appear. Yankner said doctors might be able to measure lithium levels in the cerebrospinal fluid or blood, or through brain imaging.

How our brains use lithium

In a healthy brain, lithium maintains the connections and communication lines that allow neurons to talk with one another. The metal also helps form the myelin that coats and insulates the communication lines and helps microglial cells clear cellular debris that can impede brain function.

“In normal aging mice,” Yankner said, “lithium promotes good memory function. In normal aging humans,” higher lithium levels also correspond to better memory function.

The depletion of lithium in the brain plays a role in most of the deterioration in several mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.

Loss of lithium accelerates the development of harmful clumps of the protein amyloid beta and tangles of the protein tau that resemble the structures found in people with Alzheimer’s. Amyloid plaques and tau tangles disrupt communication between nerve cells.

The plaques in turn undermine lithium by trapping it, weakening its ability to help the brain function.

Lithium depletion is involved in other destructive processes of Alzheimer’s: decay of brain synapses, damage to the myelin that protects nerve fibers and reduced capacity of microglial cells to break down amyloid plaques.

Lithium’s pervasive role comes despite the fact that our brains contain only a small amount of it. After examining more than 500 human brains from Rush and other brain banks, Yankner’s team discovered the naturally occurring lithium in the brain is 1,000 times less than the lithium provided in medications to treat bipolar disorder.

Li-Huei Tsai, director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who was not involved in the study, called it “very exciting,” especially when many in the field, including her own lab, have focused on genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s.

“But clearly genetic risk factors are not the only things,” said Tsai, who is also Picower professor of neuroscience. “There are a lot of people walking around carrying these risk genes, but they are not affected by Alzheimer’s disease. I feel this study provides a very important piece of the puzzle.”

Pathways for treatment

Alzheimer’s treatments mostly help to manage symptoms and slow the decline it causes in thinking and functioning. Aducanumab, lecanemab, and donanemab, all lab-made antibodies, bind to the harmful amyloid plaques and help remove them.

Donepezil, rivastigmine and galantamine ― all in the class of medications known as cholinesterase inhibitors ― work by replenishing a chemical messenger called acetylcholine, which is diminished in Alzheimer’s. Acetylcholine plays an important role in memory, muscle movement and attention.

Yankner and his team found that when they gave otherwise healthy mice a reduced-lithium diet, the mice lost brain synapses and began to lose memory. “We found that when we administered lithium orotate to aging mice [that had] started losing their memory, the lithium orotate actually reverted their memory to the young adult, six-month level,” he said.

Lithium orotate helped the mice reduce production of the amyloid plaques and tau tangles, and allowed the microglial cells to remove the plaques much more effectively.

Yankner said one factor that might help lithium orotate reach clinical trials sooner is the small amount of the treatment needed, which could greatly reduce the risk of harmful side effects, such as kidney dysfunction and thyroid toxicity.

Aside from its potential in treating Alzheimer’s, Yankner said lithium orotate might also have implications for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, an area his lab is investigating.

“That needs to be rigorously examined,” he said. “But we’re looking at a whole slew of disorders.”

Today's Nerds

Bless you, nerds.

Get Ready To Be Amazed

The nerds have spent millennia doing impressive things by taking small steps to get better analogous/mechanical fixes.

Now they're about to take a giant leap forward by going digital.

This could be truly outstanding.

We can only hope we don't let the politicians and the rubes fuck things up to the point where we foreclose on a future that promises real greatness, instead of settling for some phony sloganeering shit that fits on a hat.

Go get 'em, nerds.

Today's Nerds

Elizabeth Lee Hazen                Rachel Fuller Brown

In 1948, two women changed the course of medicine… by mailing each other dirt.

They weren’t famous professors.

They didn’t work in fancy labs.

In fact, Rachel Fuller Brown, a chemist in Albany, and Elizabeth Lee Hazen, a microbiologist in New York City, never even worked in the same room.

But what they did share was persistence, trust, and a common mission — to find a cure hidden in the most overlooked places: the soil beneath our feet.

Elizabeth would collect microbes from dirt samples across the country and mail them to Rachel. Rachel would test them — one by one — for any antifungal properties. Over time, hundreds of tiny vials traveled through the U.S. postal system in what became a groundbreaking long-distance collaboration.

Then, one humble sample from Virginia changed everything.

They discovered nystatin — the first safe and effective antifungal drug for humans.
It treated infections like candidiasis, athlete’s foot, and life-threatening fungal diseases that had no cure until then.

But nystatin did more than heal people.

It also protected ancient manuscripts, paintings, trees, and priceless works of art from fungal decay. It became a silent guardian not just in hospitals — but in museums and libraries too.
And the fortune they could’ve made?

They donated all of it.

With the royalties from their discovery, Brown and Hazen created a fund to support future scientists — especially young ones, just starting out. No headlines. No awards. Just a lasting legacy.

Nerds Rule

Tell me again - what's Elon for? What is he doing for us?

I mean, I realize we're taking a multi point approach - different companies doing different things - but other than some pretty impressive successes 15 years ago, they don't seem to be producing tangible results - just some splashy publicity stunts. So what're we getting for our money?

Just asking - Elon's running around playing Mr Efficiency Expert, looking under everybody else's skirt. We pay him billions every year, and I'd like to know: What exactly is he delivering?

Where are Elon's bullet points?

This is what I'm talking about:

Private Lunar Lander Blue Ghost Aces Moon Touchdown with a Special Delivery for NASA

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private lunar lander carrying a drill, vacuum and other experiments for NASA touched down on the moon Sunday, the latest in a string of companies looking to kickstart business on Earth's celestial neighbor ahead of astronaut missions.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the moon’s northeastern edge of the near side.

Confirmation of successful touchdown came from the company's Mission Control outside Austin, Texas, following the action some 225,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) away.

“You all stuck the landing. We’re on the moon,” Firefly’s Will Coogan, chief engineer for the lander, reported.

An upright and stable landing makes Firefly — a startup founded a decade ago — the first private outfit to put a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Even countries have faltered, with only five claiming success: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan.

A half hour after landing, Blue Ghost started to send back pictures from the surface, the first one a selfie somewhat obscured by the sun's glare. The second shot included the home planet, a blue dot glimmering in the blackness of space.

Two other companies’ landers are hot on Blue Ghost’s heels, with the next one expected to join it on the moon later this week.

Blue Ghost — named after a rare U.S. species of fireflies — had its size and shape going for it. The squat four-legged lander stands 6-foot-6 (2 meters) tall and 11 feet (3.5 meters) wide, providing extra stability, according to the company.

Launched in mid-January from Florida, the lander carried 10 experiments to the moon for NASA. The space agency paid $101 million for the delivery, plus $44 million for the science and tech on board. It’s the third mission under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program, intended to ignite a lunar economy of competing private businesses while scouting around before astronauts show up later this decade.

Firefly’s Ray Allensworth said the lander skipped over hazards including boulders to land safely. Allensworth said the team continued to analyze the data to figure out the lander's exact position, but all indications suggest it landed within the 328-foot (100-meter) target zone in Mare Crisium.

The demos should get two weeks of run time, before lunar daytime ends and the lander shuts down.

It carried a vacuum to suck up moon dirt for analysis and a drill to measure temperature as deep as 10 feet (3 meters) below the surface. Also on board: a device for eliminating abrasive lunar dust — a scourge for NASA’s long-ago Apollo moonwalkers, who got it caked all over their spacesuits and equipment.

On its way to the moon, Blue Ghost beamed back exquisite pictures of the home planet. The lander continued to stun once in orbit around the moon, with detailed shots of the moon's gray pockmarked surface. At the same time, an on-board receiver tracked and acquired signals from the U.S. GPS and European Galileo constellations, an encouraging step forward in navigation for future explorers.

The landing set the stage for a fresh crush of visitors angling for a piece of lunar business.

Another lander — a tall and skinny 15-footer (4 meters tall) built and operated by Houston-based Intuitive Machines — is due to land on the moon Thursday. It’s aiming for the bottom of the moon, just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole. That’s closer to the pole than the company got last year with its first lander, which broke a leg and tipped over.

Despite the tumble, Intuitive Machines' lander put the U.S. back on the moon for the first time since NASA astronauts closed out the Apollo program in 1972.

A third lander from the Japanese company ispace is still three months from landing. It shared a rocket ride with Blue Ghost from Cape Canaveral on Jan. 15, taking a longer, windier route. Like Intuitive Machines, ispace is also attempting to land on the moon for the second time. Its first lander crashed in 2023.

The moon is littered with wreckage not only from ispace, but dozens of other failed attempts over the decades.

NASA wants to keep up a pace of two private lunar landers a year, realizing some missions will fail, said the space agency's top science officer Nicky Fox.

“It really does open up a whole new way for us to get more science to space and to the moon," Fox said.

Unlike NASA’s successful Apollo moon landings that had billions of dollars behind them and ace astronauts at the helm, private companies operate on a limited budget with robotic craft that must land on their own, said Firefly CEO Jason Kim.

Kim said everything went like clockwork.

“We got some moon dust on our boots," Kim said.

Listen Up, Nerds

Weapons, predatory behavior, and big expensive brains.

Arizona State Univ Center For Human Origins

Jess Thompson, PhD, Yale, is the kind of pro who knows her shit so well she can explain it in a way that makes it understandable to a dope like me. Which is a very good thing, because this kind of presentation is basically a combination progress report and sales pitch.

These efforts have to be funded, so she's showing the people who have ponied up the money so far, that spending more of their money on this stuff is worth it.

I think it is.

The Final Frontier

Nerds rule!

Electrifying The Hardhats

Progress is convincing the workin' guys that the cool new gear is all electric.

The fact that it's better for the future of their kids is, for now, secondary at best. What they care about right now - IMHO what they should care about - is whether or not the stuff works, and can it be a real benefit to them on the job?

SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. — On a 40-acre dirt and gravel lot, I climbed into the cabin of a 55,000-pound excavator. Construction crews use these hulking machines to dig trenches for laying pipes and wires or hollowing out building foundations. I took it out for a joyride.

10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint

When I switched on the motor, there was no ignition roar and no belch of diesel fumes from a tailpipe. This machine, powered by four batteries that each are big enough to run a small electric car, came to life silently.

The quiet didn’t last. The excavator’s giant treads trundled noisily over the gravel until I reached a good spot to dig. Then I grabbed hold of two joysticks and sank the bucket arm down into the dirt to scoop out as much earth as the claw could carry. I hit a big rock. The machine momentarily pitched forward, straining to loosen it from the ground — and then the electric motor heaved the boulder and a clod of dirt into the air in a puff of dust.

When they run on diesel, the biggest pieces of construction equipment can churn through 10 or more gallons of fuel per hour, emitting as much carbon and air pollution as several cars combined. Off-road equipment, including excavators, bulldozers, cranes and tractors, create about 3 percent of U.S. carbon emissions — roughly the same as the airline industry. Making these machines carbon-free would be almost as big a step toward halting climate change as taking all commercial planes out of the sky.

It won’t be easy. Electrifying off-road vehicles presents all the same challenges as replacing gas-powered cars with EVs, including worries about charging infrastructure, battery capacity and high upfront costs — plus the added challenge of digging, pushing and lifting heavy loads for hours at a time.

“They are more difficult because most of these vehicles don’t just propel themselves, they also do work,” said Kim Stelson, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Minnesota who studies off-road vehicles. “But if we want to solve the overall problem [of climate change], we have to solve this one.”

Despite the obstacles, electric machines are slowly starting to show up at farms and construction sites. John Deere plans to sell more than 20 models of electric and hybrid construction equipment and tractors by 2026. Construction giants Caterpillar and Komatsu are developing electric excavators and wheel loaders. Volvo Construction Equipment, which made the excavator I was driving, sells seven electric models. “Almost all the major companies are working on electric solutions,” Stelson said.

How are electric and diesel machines different?

Volvo’s electric machines are very similar to its diesel machines, with the exception that their engines have been swapped out for batteries. The 55,000-pound electric excavator, for instance, has 264 kilowatt-hours of battery storage — the same as nine Mini Cooper EVs, or a little more than one electric Hummer.

I drove both the electric and diesel versions of the machine, and the differences between them mirrored the differences between EVs and gas-powered cars. The electric machine idled silently and its controls were slightly more responsive than the diesel one, since its electric motor can deliver power faster than a combustion engine — similar to the way an EV can accelerate faster than a gas-powered car. But both machines pulled dirt out of the ground with the same power.

You can see the similarities on display on the assembly line at Volvo Construction Equipment’s North American headquarters in Shippensburg. Similar hulking, half-formed chassis move down the lines for both types of vehicles. But, halfway through, a huge hook hanging from the ceiling will either lower an engine or a battery pack into the machine for workers to install.

The electric machines are catching on slowly. Of the 60,000 pieces of construction equipment Volvo delivered to customers last year, 895 were electric according to the company’s annual report. The company said it aims to offer electric versions of more than a third of its models by 2030.

Where might you spot electric construction equipment?

Electric machines are good for a particular kind of job site. The machines need a place to charge — which could be the same level 1, 2 or 3 chargers that EVs plug into in buildings, parking lots or charging stations. And ideally, they wouldn’t have to move heavy loads for very long shifts.

“If you have a 24-hour, round-the-clock type of [work schedule], battery electrics aren’t very practical because you can’t stop to plug in for the four or five hours that it would take to recharge it,” said Ray Gallant, vice president of sustainability and productivity services at Volvo Construction Equipment.

Volvo says it often sells or leases electric machines for job sites where it pays to limit noise and air pollution. The Toronto Zoo used one of the company’s machines to avoid upsetting animals while repairing their enclosures. Cemeteries have bought excavators to quietly dig graves without disturbing mourners. Construction crews working on busy city streets use the machines to avoid annoying the neighbors or polluting their air.

At the Molly Pitcher dairy farm five miles down the road from Volvo Construction Equipment, farmers use an electric wheel loader to move feed, clean out barn floors and help lift and maintain pumps. The farmers say it’s better for the cattle to be around quieter machinery. Plus, they can charge the battery for free because the farm generates its own electricity using a device that converts manure into power.

“The more I can use that electricity, the more profitable we are,” said Keith Jones, the farm owner.

On other job sites where electric vehicles aren’t practical, construction crews can cut their emissions by running their machines on greener fuels, such as renewable diesel made from crops or used cooking oil. California now requires all off-road equipment to run on renewable diesel.

“There, you’re getting up to a 70 percent carbon benefit relative to running a diesel fuel, so that could be a really key intermediate step,” said Tom Durbin, a faculty researcher at the Center for Environmental Research and Technology at the University of California, Riverside.

One day, crews could upgrade to machines that run on pure hydrogen, a fuel that creates zero carbon emissions — but those mainly exist as prototypes today.

Hot Air

“It all started with an enquiry from a nurse,” Dr Karl Kruszelnicki told listeners to his science phone-in show on the Triple J radio station in Brisbane. “She wanted to know whether she was contaminating the operating theatre she worked in by quietly farting in the sterile environment during operations, and I realised that I didn't know. But I was determined to find out.”

Dr Kruszelnicki then described the method by which he had established whether human flatus was germ-laden, or merely malodorous. “I contacted Luke Tennent, a microbiologist in Canberra, and together we devised an experiment. He asked a colleague to break wind directly onto two Petri dishes from a distance of 5 centimetres, first fully clothed, then with his trousers down. Then he observed what happened. Overnight, the second Petri dish sprouted visible lumps of two types of bacteria that are usually found only in the gut and on the skin. But the flatus which had passed through clothing caused no bacteria to sprout, which suggests that clothing acts as a filter.

“Our deduction is that the enteric zone in the second Petri dish was caused by the flatus itself, and the splatter ring around that was caused by the sheer velocity of the fart, which blew skin bacteria from the cheeks and blasted it onto the dish. 

It seems, therefore, that flatus can cause infection if the emitter is naked, but not if he or she is clothed. But the results of the experiment should not be considered alarming, because neither type of bacterium is harmful. In fact, they're similar to the ‘friendly’ bacteria found in yoghurt.

“Our final conclusion? Don't fart naked near food. All right, it's not rocket science. But then again, maybe it is?”

Today's Nerdy Thing

Does this explain why we chose a snake to be the villain in the Garden of Eden story?