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ECP NetHappenings Newsletter 9-18-23 #AI #HEALTH #ReproductiveRights #Pope #TechTools #COVID
I Hear …..
I hear the next Kentucky Derby, in order to prevent the deaths of more horses, will be run with Republicans who have taken ivermectin.
I hear that People who are disruptive and rude in theaters are now officially called “Bobos”. This is in effect for any gender.
I hear the only thing better than having your own Gulfstream jet is getting to claim millions in tax deductions for it. All you have to do is make
a case you’re using it for business, which turns out to be surprisingly easy.I hear p3R1n01D is leetspeak” for “paranoid.”
#HEALTH
New Vaccine Can Completely Reverse Autoimmune Diseases Like Multiple Sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes, and Crohn’s Disease
The inverse vaccine, described in a recent paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, takes advantage of how the liver naturally marks molecules from broken-down cells with “do not attack” flags to prevent autoimmune reactions to cells that die by natural processes. PME researchers coupled an antigen — a molecule being attacked by the immune system— with a molecule resembling a fragment of an aged cell that the liver would recognize as friend, rather than foe. The team showed how the vaccine could successfully stop the autoimmune reaction associated with a multiple-sclerosis-like disease.
Scientists discover a new kind of brain cell
There’s hints that it could lead to new treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and other brain disorders. https://www.freethink.com/science/brain-cell
Women’s #Reproductive Rights
There Are Now Tests That Can Detect If Someone Took Abortion Pills
https://jezebel.com/there-are-now-tests-that-can-detect-if-someone-took-abo-1850839647
The chilling development comes out of Poland, where prosecutors have already used the tests to investigate pregnancy outcomes, reports the New York Times.
Scientists in Poland have reportedly developed lab tests that can detect whether people have taken abortion pills—and those tests are already being used to investigate pregnancy outcomes under the country’s abortion ban. This is an alarming development, to say the least, and unfortunately, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before a U.S. state replicates the effort.
According to a bone-chilling piece in the New York Times, Polish scientists have developed tests that can identify both mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs typically used in a medication abortion. (Though some people do use misoprostol alone.) The studies were part of a research project funded by the Polish government where researchers were able to find evidence of misoprostol in the placenta and mifepristone in a woman’s blood sample. A spokesperson for a prosecutor’s office in Wroclaw confirmed to the Times that Polish authorities have already used the tests to investigate pregnancy outcomes.
THEY / EVERYBODY #POPE, ALWAYS KNEW
Letter suggests Pope Pius XII knew of mass gassings of Jews and Poles in 1942
Letter from church source in anti-Hitler resistance reporting 6,000 daily killings undercuts Vatican’s claims of lack of knowledge
Letter from church source in anti-Hitler resistance reporting 6,000 daily killings undercuts Vatican’s claims of lack of knowledge
Newly discovered correspondence suggests that the second world war-era Pope Pius XII had detailed information from a trusted German Jesuit that up to 6,000 Jews and Poles were being gassed each day in German-occupied Poland. The documentation undercuts the Vatican’s argument that it couldn’t verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities to denounce them. The documentation from the Vatican archives, published this weekend in Italian daily Corriere della Sera, is likely to further fuel the debate about Pius’s legacy and his now-stalled beatification campaign. Historians have long been divided about Pius’s record, with supporters insisting he used quiet diplomacy to save Jewish lives while critics say he remained silent as the Holocaust raged. Corriere is reproducing a letter dated 14 December 1942 from the German Jesuit priest to Pius’s secretary, which is contained in a forthcoming book about the newly opened files of Pius’s pontificate by Giovanni Coco, a researcher and archivist in the Vatican’s apostolic archives.
Kick This Rolling Stone down the Road
“Jann Wenner has been removed from the Board of Directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,” read a statement released from the foundation on Saturday.
WHY?
Cause he Argues Black and Women Artists Aren’t ‘Articulate on an Intelligent Level’ as White Rockers
In the introduction of his new book ‘The Masters,’ the businessman claimed Black and women artists aren’t in his “zeitgeist.”
https://www.complex.com/music/a/markelibert/rolling-stone-founder-argues-black-woman-artists-white
#TECHTOOLS
Lenny Face Generator #websites #ascii
https://www.fontspace.com/lenny-face
ヽ(ಠ_ಠ)ﾉ
【️_⦣️】
(◕⍊◕)
(⚆Д⚆)
https://www.fontspace.com/font-generator
#AI
Private AI summit with senators, titans of tech garners controversy
AI has a big, dirty problem that is tarnishing Big Tech’s environmental image
OpenAI’s Moonshot: Solving the AI Alignment Problem
The ChatGPT maker imagines superintelligent AI without existential risks
Internet Ethics@IEthics Sep 16
“We’ve tried to use [#GPT4] in our research workflow…
[I]t doesn’t help enough to warrant using it for our #research. If you wanted to use it to help you write a project proposal for a new alignment project, the model didn’t understand alignment well enough to help us.” #ethics
@Simeon_CpsMost people in the world ignore that several top experts in AI safety & governance think we have more than 75% of going extinct.
They’re still trying their best to make things go well, and that’s admirable.
But more than 3 chances out of 4 of dying is an absolute nightmare.
Multiple unnamed AI experts allegedly
(a) think there is a 75% extinction risk,
(b) continue to work on AI, and
(c) refuse to report their estimates publicly.
If you really think the risk is that high, you need to speak out, explain your estimate, and pause what you are doing.
#BIGBANG
The Big Bang Theory Is True. Deal with It.
There’s something comical about cosmology. A field that tries to explain the whole universe? Give me a break! We don’t even know how a brain makes a thought! But that’s what I love about cosmology, too–the contrast between this grand scientific endeavor and our benighted, mortal selves.
And over the last century, cosmology has given us a mind-blowing insight into our existence, which anyone can grasp: Our universe exploded into being billions of years ago and is still hurtling outward.
I love telling my students the tale of this discovery. Just over a century ago, our universe consisted of the Milky Way, the swirl of stars that houses our solar system. Then telescopes got big enough to spot other galaxies far, far beyond the borders of our own. The light from these galaxies tends to be redder in proportion to their distance from us.
A fellow named Hubble concluded, based on galaxies’ red shifts, that they are receding from us. Theorists extrapolated the universe backward in time to an extremely small, dense fireball that fused primordial hydrogen into helium and other light elements. Astronomers detected light elements in the predicted proportions, corroborating so-called big-bang nucleosynthesis.
The clinching evidence emerged in 1964. Researchers at Bell Laboratories, right here in northern Jersey where I teach, detected a faint microwave signal coming from all points of the sky. Theorists had proposed the big bang would leave behind this microwave afterglow.
Come on, I enthuse to my students after recounting them this scientific creation story, isn’t that amazing? …
Read the entire unpaywalled column at
https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/the-big-bang-theory-is-true-deal-with-it
U.S. COVID infections are hovering near levels of the pandemic’s first peak in 2020, and approaching the Delta peak of late 2021, according to wastewater surveillance and modeling by forecasters.
It’s yet another sign that while the official pandemic state may be over, the days of COVID are far from it.
Viral wastewater levels are not far behind all of the pandemic’s 2020 peaks except for one—the initial peak of March 2020, which they’ve already surpassed. And they lag just slightly levels seen during the deadly Delta peak of late 2021, according to Biobot Analytics, which monitors such data for the federal government.
A forecast issued this week by Jay Weiland, a leading COVID modeler, came to the same conclusions. On Thursday, Weiland estimated that 650,000 Americans are becoming infected daily, with 1 in 51 Americans currently infected with COVID.
Both Biobot data and Wieland’s modeling show U.S. cases beginning to recede. But they may not fall much more, if any, before the anticipated fall and winter surge.
WHO flags concerning trend
Infections aside, COVID hospitalizations and deaths are continuing to rise, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hospitalizations rose nearly 9% from Aug. 27 through Sept. 2, the most recent period for which the federal health agency made data available. And deaths rose nearly 5% from Sept. 3-9.
The World Health Organization continues to receive reports on concerning COVID trends, including a growing number of countries reporting an increase in infections, hospitalizations, and ICU admissions, Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for COVID-19 response, said at a Thursday news conference.
Vaccination, in addition to early diagnosis and access to care, can prevent severe disease and death, she said. WHO officials encouraged those at high risk for poor outcomes from the virus, like the elderly and immunocompromised, to obtain a booster ASAP—even if it’s not the latest XBB formula being rolled out in some parts of the world.
Vaccinating and boosting with any available version “remains vitally important to saving people’s lives now,” officials said.
U.S. approves updated XBB boosters
All Americans ages 6 months and older are eligible to receive an updated COVID boostertailored to the XBB Omicron strain, the CDC announced this week.
The agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 13-1 Tuesday to approve updated jabs from Moderna, Pfizer, and Novavax for the vast majority of U.S. residents. Shortly thereafter, the federal health agency announced that it had accepted the committee’s recommendation, and that vaccines would be available later in the week.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve Novavax’s updated formula. But the agency authorized such boosters from Moderna and Pfizer on Monday.
The CDC anticipates having adequate booster supply and shouldn’t need to prioritize certain groups—like the elderly or immunocompromised—for first doses, federal health officials said at the Tuesday committee meeting.
All eligible should get the new booster when possible, Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told Fortune on Tuesday.
“It is clear that the vaccine remains safe and effective at all ages,” he said. “People at high risk will especially benefit from the vaccine.”
In a statement provided to Fortune, the American Medical Association on Tuesday said it welcomed the committee’s recommendations, contending that the updated jabs would prevent about 400,000 hospitalizations and 40,000 deaths over the next couple of years.
“We continue to strongly urge everyone to stay up to date on their COVID-19, influenza, and RSV vaccines to protect themselves and their loved ones from severe complications, hospitalization, and death,” the organization said, adding that it expected an increase in infections this fall and winter.
#COVID New booster, dying strain
Last year’s updated Omicron boosters, released around Labor Day, were bivalent, tailored to both Omicron and the initial strain of COVID. This year’s boosters are monovalent, meaning they’re tailored to just one strain of the virus: XBB.1.5 “Kraken,” which dominated in the U.S. and elsewhere late last year into early this year.
The strain is now nearly extinct. XBB.1.5 was estimated to be responsible for just 2.2% of U.S. infections Friday, according to the latest variant data the CDC has made available.
While the newest jabs are tailored to a dying strain of Omicron, they’re still expected to protect against severe disease and death from currently circulating strains, the vast majority of which are members of the XBB viral family.
The formula for the new vaccines “is highly similar to the EG.5-related variants circulating now,” Dr. Stuart Ray, vice chair of medicine for data integrity and analytics at Johns Hopkins’ Department of Medicine, told Fortune on Tuesday.
Recently released preliminary data shows that refreshed boosters should also offer decent protection against new, highly mutated Omicron spawn “Pirola” BA.2.86. It’s not a member of the XBB family, and is instead thought to have evolved from so-called “stealth Omicron” BA.2.
The updated vaccine’s protection against Pirola won’t be as good as the protection it offers against EG.5 and other XBB variants, Ray said. Still, there is more to immunity than antibodies, produced by B cells in response to infection and vaccination. The other, oft-forgotten half of the immune system, T cells, provides protection against severe disease. While T cells can’t prevent infection like B cells can, they still help soften the blow—of a BA.2.86 infection, EG.5 infection, or otherwise.
Rising concern for troublesome ‘flip’ mutations
While the United States’ “variant soup” remained largely unchanged Friday, according to new data released by the CDC, experts continued to sound alarm bells about a rising proportion of variants that share the same concerning mutations.
Around 93% of U.S. COVID sequences over the past month contain the mutation F486P, Raj Rajnarayanan—assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Ark., and a top COVID-variant tracker—told Fortune on Friday. The mutation, located on the spike protein, increases the virus’s ability to effectively infect by binding more tightly with human cells. Rajnarayanan refers to it as this season’s signature mutation.
What’s more, top lineages are also beginning to pick up the spike mutation L455F, which proffers further ease of infecting cells, Rajnarayanan added.
Variant trackers refer to the F456L and L455F mutations as “flip” mutations, for complex scientific reasons involving amino acid changes. The duo is becoming one of the most concerning trends of the season, experts say, with nearly 20% of wastewater samples tracked by Biobot containing such mutations.