Science & Technology News

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Ded reckoner

More about the Danish mask study. The authors write, “In this community-based, randomized controlled trial conducted in a setting where mask wearing was uncommon and was not among other recommended public health measures related to COVID-19, a recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, incident SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with no mask recommendation.”

Perhaps a little context will help to understand the new Danish study that couldn’t demonstrate masks are effective against COVID-19 infection. About two decades ago, there were innumerable studies done to demonstrate second-hand smoking is correlated with cancer. Of course, statistical correlation is not equivalent to causality, but that’s a different subject. The studies in which it was claimed smoking correlated to cancer had been demonstrated had a confidence level of about 80 percent or lower. The problem using this relatively low confidence level to make authoritative decisions is that when the experiment is re-run to corroborate the findings, the results most often came back as statistically significant at much lower confidence levels, even below a coin-toss level of confidence, or 50 percent. So, re-examinations couldn’t show second-hand smoke was correlated cancer with any confidence. This experimental cycle was repeated over and over again without definitive resolution until a jury decided they didn’t care about (or understand) statistics and a lottery should be hosted by the tobacco companies. By comparison, there is a strong correlation, often at confidence levels at or well above 90 percent, that smoking cigarettes causes cancer. Few, well run, planned experiments were needed to show these results because, with confidence levels at about 95 percent or higher, it was relatively easy for other experimenters to run the same experiment and get the same results.

The purpose of the Danish study was to determine if wearing surgical masks could demonstrate effectiveness against coronavirus infection. “The face masks provided to participants were high-quality surgical masks with a filtration rate of 98%.” But, the confidence level was so low with the results, that, “the 95% confidence intervals are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.” These results indicate masks could be reducing infection rates, or they could be increasing infection rates. This experiment couldn’t determine which is the case. As the authors state, the proper interpretation of these data is the study could not demonstrate the effectiveness of wearing surgical masks against getting infected by COVID-19. When the authors wrote, “these findings do not provide data on the effectiveness of widespread mask wearing in the community in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections” they elaborate this is because mask wearing is relatively uncommon in the Danish community of the experiment even while social distancing is practiced, and they speculate mask wearing could have some benefit in source control. This was a high quality planned experiment, but it produced low confidence demonstrating mask effectiveness against infection. This suggests other similar experiments will produce the same ambivalent results.

Thanks for this thought-provoking analysis.
It seems as though there may be a little more reading, in my future.

[Ded reckoner]

Teenagers Discover Four Extrasolar Planets

Two Massachusetts high school students, 16 year old Kartik Pingle and 18 year old Jasmine Wright, reported, with co-authors, on "...the discovery and validation of four extrasolar planets hosted by the nearby, bright Sun-like (G3V) star HD 108236..." They might be the youngest astronomers to make such a discovery considered to be major.

[GordMay]

Ocean surface 'slicks' are pelagic nurseries for diverse fishes

A team of scientists, from NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa, Arizona State University and elsewhere, have discovered that a diverse array of marine animals find refuge in so-called 'surface slicks' in Hawai'i. These ocean features create a superhighway of nursery habitat, for more than 100 species of commercially and ecologically important fishes, such as mahi-mahi, jacks, and billfish. Their findings were published today in the journal Scientific Reports [1].

Surface slicks are meandering lines of smooth surface water formed by the convergence of ocean currents, tides, and variations in the seafloor, and have long been recognized as an important part of the seascape.

The traditional Hawaiian mele (song) Kona Kai 'Ōpua describes slicks as Ke kai ma`oki`oki, or "the streaked sea" in the peaceful seas of Kona. Despite this historical knowledge, and scientists' belief that slicks are important for fish, the tiny marine life, that slicks contain, has remained elusive.

Though the slicks only covered around 8% of the ocean surface in the 380-square-mile-study area, they contained an astounding 39% of the study area's surface-dwelling larval fish; more than 25% of its zooplankton, which the larval fish eat; and 75% of its floating organic debris such as feathers and leaves.
Larval fish densities in surface slicks off West Hawaii were, on average, over 7 times higher than densities in the surrounding waters.
The study showed that surface slicks function as a nursery habitat for marine larvae of at least 112 species of commercially and ecologically important fishes, as well as many other animals. These include coral reef fishes, such as jacks, triggerfish and goatfish; pelagic predators, for example mahi-mahi; deep-water fishes, such as lanternfish; and various invertebrates, such as snails, crabs, and shrimp.

In addition to providing crucial nursing habitat for various species and helping maintain healthy and resilient coral reefs, slicks create foraging hotspots for larval fish predators and form a bridge between coral reef and pelagic ecosystems.

While slicks may seem like havens for all tiny marine animals, there's a hidden hazard lurking in these ocean oases: plastic debris. Within the study area, 95% of the plastic debris collected into slicks, compared with 75% of the floating organic debris. Larvae may get some shelter from plastic debris, but it comes at the cost of chemical exposure and incidental ingestion.[2]

[1] “Surface slicks are pelagic nurseries for diverse ocean fauna” ~ by Jonathan L. Whitney et al
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81407-0

[2] “Prey-size plastics are invading larval fish nurseries” ~ by Jamison M. Gove et al
New research shows that many larval fish species from different ocean habitats are ingesting plastics in their preferred nursery habitat. Biodiversity and fisheries production are currently threatened by a variety of human-induced stressors, such as climate change, habitat loss, and overfishing. Our research suggests we can likely now add plastic ingestion by larval fish to that list of threats.
➥ https://www.pnas.org/content/116/48/24143

[GordMay]

Scientists call for fully open sharing of coronavirus genome data

Hundreds of scientists are urging that SARS-CoV-2 genome data should be shared more openly, to help scientists analyse how viral variants are spreading around the world.
The most popular data-sharing platform, called GISAID [1], now hosts more than 450,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes. But it doesn’t allow sequences to be reshared publicly.
In an open letter [2], researchers have called on their colleagues to post their genome data in one of a triad of databases, that don’t place any restrictions on data redistribution: the US GenBank, the European Bioinformatics Institutes European Nucleotide Archive and the DNA Data Bank of Japan, which are collectively known as the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) [3].
More ➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00305-7

[1] GISAID ➥ https://www.gisaid.org/

[2] “Open letter: Support data sharing for COVID-19" ➥ https://www.covid19dataportal.org/su...haring-covid19

[3] INSDC ➥ International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration | INSDC

[GordMay]

A new scientific study has found that fertility is hereditary.
If your parents didn’t have children, chances are, you won’t either.

A heritable trait is, simply, an offspring’s trait that resembles the parents’ corresponding trait, more than it resembles the same trait, in a random individual in the population.

Traits can include characteristics such as height, eye color, and intelligence, as well as disorders like schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder.

In scientific terms, heritability is a statistical concept (represented as h²) that describes how much of the variation in a given trait can be attributed to genetic variation. An estimate of the heritability of a trait is specific to one population in one environment, and it can change over time as circumstances change.

Heritability estimates range from zero to one. For example, the heritability of height is about 0.80 (fairly high), and the heritability of hours of sleep per night is 0.15-0.20 (low).

A heritability close to zero, indicates that almost all of the variability, in a trait among people, is due to environmental factors, with very little influence from genetic differences. Characteristics such as religion, language spoken, and political preference have a heritability of zero, because they are not under genetic control.

A heritability close to one, indicates that almost all of the variability in a trait comes from genetic differences, with very little contribution from environmental factors. Many disorders that are caused by mutations in single genes, such as phenylketonuria (PKU), have high heritability.

Most complex traits in people, such as intelligence and multifactorial diseases, have a heritability somewhere in the middle, suggesting that their variability is due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Heritability can be difficult to understand, so there are many misconceptions about what it can and cannot tell us about a given trait:
- Heritability does not indicate what proportion of a trait is determined by genes and what proportion is determined by environment. So, a heritability of 0.7 does not mean that a trait is 70% caused by genetic factors; it means than 70% of the variability in the trait in a population is due to genetic differences among people.
- Knowing the heritability of a trait does not provide information about which genes or environmental influences are involved, or how important they are in determining the trait.
- Heritable is not the same as familial. A trait is described as familial if it is shared by members of a family. Traits can appear in families for many reasons in addition to genetics, such as similarities in lifestyle and environment. For example, the language that is spoken tends to be shared in families, but it has no genetic contribution and so is not heritable.
- Heritability does not give any information about how easy or difficult it is to change a trait. For example, hair color is a trait with high heritability, but it is very easy to change with dye.

“Estimating Trait Heritability" ~ by: Naomi R. Wray & Peter M. Vissche
➥ https://www.nature.com/scitable/topi...ability-46889/

“Genetic vs. heritable trait” ~ by Razib Khan
➥ https://www.discovermagazine.com/the...eritable-trait

“The heritability fallacy” ~ by David S Moore & David Shenk
➥ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/....1002/wcs.1400

[Sailmonkey]

Originally Posted by GordMay

A new scientific study has found that fertility is hereditary.
If your parents didn’t have children, chances are, you won’t either.

This is sheer genius!

[CatNewBee]

Originally Posted by GordMay

A new scientific study has found that fertility is hereditary.
If your parents didn’t have children, chances are, you won’t either.

A heritable trait is, simply, an offspring’s trait that resembles the parents’ corresponding trait, more than it resembles the same trait, in a random individual in the population.

Traits can include characteristics such as height, eye color, and intelligence, as well as disorders like schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder.

In scientific terms, heritability is a statistical concept (represented as h²) that describes how much of the variation in a given trait can be attributed to genetic variation. An estimate of the heritability of a trait is specific to one population in one environment, and it can change over time as circumstances change.

Heritability estimates range from zero to one. For example, the heritability of height is about 0.80 (fairly high), and the heritability of hours of sleep per night is 0.15-0.20 (low).

A heritability close to zero, indicates that almost all of the variability, in a trait among people, is due to environmental factors, with very little influence from genetic differences. Characteristics such as religion, language spoken, and political preference have a heritability of zero, because they are not under genetic control.

A heritability close to one, indicates that almost all of the variability in a trait comes from genetic differences, with very little contribution from environmental factors. Many disorders that are caused by mutations in single genes, such as phenylketonuria (PKU), have high heritability.

Most complex traits in people, such as intelligence and multifactorial diseases, have a heritability somewhere in the middle, suggesting that their variability is due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Heritability can be difficult to understand, so there are many misconceptions about what it can and cannot tell us about a given trait:
- Heritability does not indicate what proportion of a trait is determined by genes and what proportion is determined by environment. So, a heritability of 0.7 does not mean that a trait is 70% caused by genetic factors; it means than 70% of the variability in the trait in a population is due to genetic differences among people.
- Knowing the heritability of a trait does not provide information about which genes or environmental influences are involved, or how important they are in determining the trait.
- Heritable is not the same as familial. A trait is described as familial if it is shared by members of a family. Traits can appear in families for many reasons in addition to genetics, such as similarities in lifestyle and environment. For example, the language that is spoken tends to be shared in families, but it has no genetic contribution and so is not heritable.
- Heritability does not give any information about how easy or difficult it is to change a trait. For example, hair color is a trait with high heritability, but it is very easy to change with dye.

“Estimating Trait Heritability" ~ by: Naomi R. Wray & Peter M. Vissche
➥ https://www.nature.com/scitable/topi...ability-46889/

“Genetic vs. heritable trait” ~ by Razib Khan
➥ https://www.discovermagazine.com/the...eritable-trait

“The heritability fallacy” ~ by David S Moore & David Shenk
➥ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/....1002/wcs.1400

A new scientific study has found that fertility is hereditary.

If your parents didn’t have children, chances are, you won’t either.

Common Gord, you can do better... [emoji1787][emoji1787][emoji1787]

IF your parents didn’t have children, HOW the hell are you around then? (asking for a friend [emoji12] )

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

... IF your parents didn’t have children, HOW the hell are you around then? (asking for a friend [emoji12] )

Do I understand correctly, that you agree with the conclusions, drawn from the scientists' research?

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Do I understand correctly, that you agree with the conclusions, drawn from the scientists' research?

Kind of reminds me of the scene in Full Metal Jacket, where the Drill Sergeant asks Gomer Pyle "Did your parents have any children that lived?"

[Lodesman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNUVbZV5aig

[carlosproa]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

A new scientific study has found that fertility is hereditary.

If your parents didn’t have children, chances are, you won’t either.

Common Gord, you can do better... [emoji1787][emoji1787][emoji1787]

IF your parents didn’t have children, HOW the hell are you around then? (asking for a friend [emoji12] )

That is the job of the milkman of course [emoji23]

[DockDoc]

"Diarrhea is hereditary.

It runs in your jeans"

My Grandad's favorite joke!

[GordMay]

What is direct heating and how does it impact our future?

With some simple calculations, two scientists estimate that Earth will be unlivable by 2370 due to direct heating, which, despite how it sounds, is not related to climate change.
“Doomsdays” may occur due to greenhouse gas emissions by 2300, and/or direct heating by 2300–2400.

“Population Growth, Energy Use, and the Implications for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” ~ by Brendan Mullan, Jacob Haqq-Misra
➥ https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1806/1806.06474.pdf

[GordMay]

A new kind of flu vaccine

When infected with the flu virus, your immune system produces antibodies to fend it off. Most of these antibodies interact with the HA head and prevent the virus from getting into your cells.

But there’s a downside to that strong reaction. Because the immune response to the virus’s head is so vigorous, it pays little attention to other parts of the virus. That means that your immune system is not prepared to fend off any future infection with a virus that has a different HA head, even if the rest of the virus is identical.

Current flu vaccines are inactivated versions of the influenza virus and so also work by inducing antibodies targeted to the HA head. And that’s why each version of the vaccine usually works only against a particular strain. But, as the flu spreads, the rapid rate of genetic change can produce new versions of the HA head that will evade the antibodies induced by the vaccine. These newly resistant viruses will then render even the current season’s vaccine ineffective.

The stalk portion of the HA molecule is much more genetically stable than the head. And HA stalks from different flu strains are much more alike than their head regions are.

So, an obvious way to protect people against different flu strains would be to use just the HA stalk in a vaccine. Unfortunately vaccination with only a headless stalk doesn’t seem to prevent infection.

Scientists are currently pursuing several different solutions to this problem. [1]

A team of scientists, led by Florian Krammer at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, just completed the first human clinical trial of what they hope will be a universal flu vaccine.[2]

The researchers used recombinant genetic technology to create flu viruses with “chimeric” HA proteins – essentially a patchwork quilt built from pieces of different flu strains.

Volunteers for the clinical trial received two vaccinations separated by three months. The first dose consisted of an inactivated H1N1 virus with its original HA stalk but the head portion from a bird influenza virus. Vaccination with this virus induced a mild antibody response to the foreign head, and a robust response to the stalk. This pattern meant that the immune systems of the subjects had never encountered the head before, but had seen the stalk from previous flu vaccinations or infections.

The second vaccination consisted of the same H1N1 virus but with an HA head from a different bird virus. This dose elicited, again, a mild antibody response to the new head, but a further boost in response to the HA stalk. After each vaccine dose the subjects’ stalk antibody concentrations averaged about eight times higher than their initial levels.

Researchers found that even though the vaccine was based on the HA stalk of the H1N1 virus strain, the antibodies it elicited reacted to HA stalks from other strains too. In lab tests, the antibodies from vaccinated volunteers attacked the H2N2 virus that caused the 1957 Asian flu pandemic and the H9N2 virus that the CDC considers to be of concern for future outbreaks. The antibodies did not react to the stalk of the more distantly related H3 viral strain.

The antibody response also lasted a long time; after a year and a half, the volunteers still had about four times the concentration of antibodies to the HA stalk in their blood as when the trial started.

Since this was a phase 1 clinical trial testing only for adverse effects (which were minimal), the researchers didn’t expose vaccinated people to the flu to test if their new antibodies protected them.

However, they did inject the subjects’ blood serum, which contains the antibodies, into mice to see if it would protect them against the flu virus. Getting a shot of serum taken from volunteers a month after receiving the booster shot, when antibody levels were high, led to mice being 95% healthier after virus exposure than mice who got blood serum from nonvaccinated volunteers. Even the mice who received serum that was collected from vaccinated volunteers a year after the start of the trial were about 30% less sick.

These results [2] show that vaccination with a chimeric flu protein can provide long-lasting immunity to several different strains of the influenza virus.

Scientists will need to continue optimizing this approach so it works for different types and strains of influenza.[3] But the success of this first human trial means you may one day get a single shot and, at last, be free from the flu.

[1] “Recombinant Influenza Vaccines: Saviors to Overcome Immunodominance” ~ by Nimitha R. Mathew and Davide Angeletti
➥ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...019.02997/full

[2] “A chimeric hemagglutinin-based universal influenza virus vaccine approach induces broad and long-lasting immunity in a randomized, placebo-controlled phase I trial” ~ by Raffael Nachbagauer, Jodi Feser, & Florian Krammer
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1118-7

[3] “A Universal Influenza Vaccine: The Strategic Plan for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases” ~ by Emily J Erbelding et al
➥ https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/218/3/347/4904047

[SailOar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ps7uuwDeu4

What is plate tectonics?