Heat Waves Come to Those Who Wait

Just documenting the use of ai images on the phys.og site; this is one of the first [link], although I did also see one about 6 - 18 months ago.

Meanwhile, on Earth, and during the hottest summer ever recorded:

More than 500 fall ill after eating bánh mì in Vietnam

May 2024, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51n0731nklo

Kimchi blamed for mass sickness in South Korea

July 2024, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce58m22ljrro

The Australian town where people live underground

May 2024, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230803-the-town-where-people-live-underground

Here's a metric for you:

In the winter, this troglodyte lifestyle may seem merely eccentric. But on a summer's day, Coober Pedy – loosely translated from an indigenous Australian term that means "white man in a hole" – needs no explanation: it regularly hits 52C (126F), so hot that birds have been known to fall from the sky and electronics must be stored in fridges.

Why Science is Hard

Women receiving inflated risks from genetic testing could undergo unnecessary breast surgery

Sep 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-women-inflated-genetic-unnecessary-breast.html

Women who discover outside of a clinical setting that they carry a disease-causing variant in one of the BRCA genes may be told their risk of breast cancer is 60–80%. In fact, the risk could be less than 20% if they do not have a close relative with the condition.

Until recently, women who received BRCA results did so because they attended clinic due to symptoms, or a family history of disease.

However, many people now pay for home DNA testing kits, or are given results as part of taking part in genetic research, without ever having any personal link with breast cancer. The new research was conducted to get a better idea of the true risk level of these BRCA variants in the general population.

The research team found a similar result when looking at genetic risk of Lynch syndrome, a genetic condition which increases the risk of colon cancer and some other cancers.

via University of Exeter: Influence of family history on penetrance of hereditary cancers in a population setting, eClinicalMedicine (2023). dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.102159

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.102159

Image credit: AI Art - Egg - 2023

The Big Hard

Drinking alcohol brings no health benefits, study finds

Apr 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-alcohol-health-benefits.html

You've been told that one drink a day is actually good for your health -- but it's so hard to believe, right? It's good for your heart! It can't be true right?

No, it's not true. We screwed up, for decades, using one bad study after another to support a crazy idea. Can it be true that not one person stopped and said, wait, that sounds too good, let me double check that study. Not until now. 

It's been named "former-drinker bias", and it will be in every public health textbook for the rest of time starting now, as an example of what can go wrong with biostatistics and epidemiological research. 

We heard rumblings of this a while back...

• via Public Library of Science: John U, et al. (2021) Alcohol abstinence and mortality in a general population sample of adults in Germany: A cohort study. PLoS Med 18(11): e1003819. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003819 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003819
• Baselines, Biases and Big Data Problems - The Secrets of Statistics and the Magic of Metrology https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2022/04/baselines-biases-and-big-data-problems.html

And now this article sums it up pretty well:

• Former drinkers aren't lifetime abstainers -- For example, many studies tend to place former drinkers in the same group as lifetime abstainers, referring to them all as "non-drinkers," Stockwell said.
• But former drinkers typically have given up or cut down on alcohol because of health problems, Stockwell said. The new analysis found that former drinkers actually have a 22% higher risk of death compared to abstainers.
• Their presence in the "non-drinker" group biases the results, creating the illusion that light daily drinking is healthy, Stockwell said.
• It's called "former-drinker bias"; and the reason it's been hiding in our public health research for decades? 
• "This is an overview of a lot of really bad studies," Stockwell said. "There's a lot of confounding and bias in these studies, and our analysis illustrates that."

via Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia:  Jinhui Zhao et al, Association Between Daily Alcohol Intake and Risk of All-Cause Mortality, JAMA Network Open (2023). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.6185

https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.6185

Image credit: AI Art - My Feet On Yours by Disney Concept Artist - 2022

Post Script:

Continuum of Risk

• 2 standard drinks or less a week -- You are likely to avoid alcohol-related consequences for yourself or others at this level.
• 3 to 6 standard drinks a week -- Your risk of developing several types of cancer, including breast and colon cancer, increases at this level.
• 7 standard drinks or more a week -- Your risk of heart disease or stroke increases significantly at this level.

Bonus:

Partially unrelated, but still a good example of why science is hard:

HUGO (Human Genome Organisation) Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC), the body that names genes, has changed 27 genes to avoid being confused by Excel's default naming protocols.

For example, SEPT2 is the short name of a gene called Septin 2....

-Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates

Aug 2020, The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates

Bicameral Supremacy

How commercial actors influence and impact health and society

Apr 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-commercial-actors-impact-health-society.html

A Lancet Series on the commercial determinants of health (CDOH) is a ground-breaking exposé of the products and practices of the CDOH and provides recommendations and frameworks to foster a better understanding of the diversity of the commercial world, potential pathways to health harms or benefits, and the need for regulatory action and investment in enterprises that advance health, well-being, equity, and society.

Dr. Mialon continued, "Often, we're hearing that individuals just need to make healthier choices for themselves. But that's ignoring that our choices are shaped by external factors, such as how much marketing we're exposed to, or the lack of protection against pollution because fossil fuel companies orchestrated a disinformation campaign on that topic. My work exposes those practices of commercial actors. It helps inform the public, who can then ask for change."

via Trinity College Dublin: Sharon Friel et al, Commercial determinants of health: future directions, The Lancet (2023). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00011-9

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00011-9

Jennifer Lacy-Nichols et al, Conceptualising commercial entities in public health: beyond unhealthy commodities and transnational corporations, The Lancet (2023). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00012-0

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00012-0

Anna B Gilmore et al, Defining and conceptualising the commercial determinants of health, The Lancet (2023). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00013-2

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00013-2

Image credit: Fruiting body of a parasitic fungus erupts from body of its victim - Roberto García-Roa - 2022

Add the article about pfas not actually doing what it says --

Study finds harmful PFAS don't actually prevent furniture stains

Apr 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-04-pfas-dont-furniture.html

Put this on a wall:

"It was surprising that these harmful but supposedly indispensable chemicals had no practical benefit"

via Green Science Policy Institute: Jonas LaPier et al, Evaluating the Performance of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substance Finishes on Upholstery Fabrics, AATCC Journal of Research (2023). DOI: 10.1177/24723444231159856

https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/24723444231159856

Bonus:

For-profit hospices deliver lower quality care than nonprofit hospices, finds study

Feb 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-for-profit-hospices-quality-nonprofit.html

via RAND Corporation: Association of hospice profit status with family caregivers' reported care experiences, JAMA Internal Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.7076

https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.7076

Testing of smartphone apps that identify plants shows most are not very good

Apr 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-04-smartphone-apps-good.html

It doesn't matter if it's good, as long as people think it's good --

Many smartphone apps claim to identify plants, but as with other apps, little is done by independent groups to verify their accuracy. 

They note that all of the apps are based on deep-learning technology and have been trained using images posted on the internet. This, they further note, leads to errors because so many images of plants on the internet are mislabeled.

The team concludes that none of the apps are good enough to use as a field guide for people foraging for food in the wild, nor are they good enough for use by environmentalists or farmers to determine which plants to protect and which to eradicate. Instead, they suggest, they can be used by hobbyists hoping to learn more about their local environment.

via University of Galway's School of Natural Science and University of Leeds' School of Geography: Neil Campbell et al, A repeatable scoring system for assessing Smartphone applications ability to identify herbaceous plants, PLOS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283386

https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283386

On Food

Has your food been chemically altered? New database of 50,000 products provides answers

May 2022, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-05-food-chemically-database-products.html

From the lab that brought you the Food Network (not the television channel), aka the Foodome:

https://www.barabasilab.com/science/project/foodome

This new database is like x-ray vision for food processing.

Since concentrations of different nutrients in food follow a fixed pattern, and a mathematical formula, machine learning can tell how much that food has been changed from its natural state.

One example is some orange juices that are labeled "natural" but are actually divided into three different chemicals before being stored separately and remixed later. 

And we care about this because ultra-processed foods have been associated with poor health outcomes. Also we care because their study showed that 73% of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed. 

They're calling it the "dark matter" of food (chemical components not listed in the nutrition facts), and we now have a public database on 50,000 food products selected at random from stores in the U.S. So they just ripped the hood off, Scooby Doo style.

Each food is given a score from 0 to 100 (ultra-processed to less processed), and users can compare different products. For example, Triscuits with a hint of sea salt have a score of 89, original Cheez-Its score 57, and whole wheat Ritz crackers score 29. Meanwhile, reduced fat Wheat Thins received a 3. Meanwhile...

Online Database:

http://www.truefood.tech/

via Northeastern University Network Science Institute: Giulia Menichetti et al, Nutrient concentrations in food display universal behaviour, Nature Food (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-022-00511-0

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00511-0

Post Script:

Menichetti's findings take a step toward a better understanding of all food chemicals. In her paper, she observes that natural nutrients exhibit common patterns, well captured by a single equation.

The finding is unprecedented, Barabasi says. "The very existence of this formula was the most surprising thing," he says. "No one has even realized that that is possible."

(Albert-László Barabási blew up the world of network science as far back as 2002 with his book Linked, which explained for a general audience novel phenomena at the time like Friendster and the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.) Note the reason the formula is such a big deal is because nobody had any idea it existed, and it wasn't until a massive computer digested tens of thousands of scientific articles about food that it just burped out this thing. And now, this thing allows us to bust right through that silky veil of marketing to see what's really in that food (or should I say "food product").

And now, on the other end:

'You are what you eat,' and now researchers know exactly what you're eating

Jul 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-07-youre.html

Untargeted Metabolomics - to understand how what we eat translates into products and byproducts of metabolism, using an unprecedented catalog (based on the Global FoodOmics initiative) of the molecule signatures created by consuming food or by processing it in our gut.

This is a big deal because most food science is based on questionnaires, which suck, because we suck at paying attention to what we eat, and suck even more at telling the truth about it.

via Collaborative Mass Spectrometry Innovation Center at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego: Rob Knight, Enhancing untargeted metabolomics using metadata-based source annotation, Nature Biotechnology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-022-01368-1

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01368-1

Also see:

Nutriome–metabolome relationships provide insights into dietary intake and metabolism

Jun 2020, Nature Food

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-0093-y

Image credit above: AI Art - Sandwich Horror - 2022

Prompt: cosmic horrors on my sandwich, close up of sandwich, by zdzislaw beksinski, by dariusz zawadzki, by john jude palencar, gothic, surrealism, cosmic horror, lovecraftian, cold hue's, warm tone gradient background, concept art, first person view, scene in dining room, beautiful composition. https://lexica.art/prompt/d2903f03-1f03-4519-bf0d-584ac8c98fb1

AI-Generated Food Image Gallery:

Sandwich Dripping with Diamonds - a crystal hamburger centerpiece, digital art, dramatic jewelry photography. https://lexica.art/prompt/ae4a1bcb-c54c-47bc-8cdc-2a1d2225e0f5

Eating Sandwiches Twice - amazing very detailed photorealistic painting of a beautiful woman enjoying a delicious mean. vibrant in color, very funny, personal, positive, visually pleasing and engaging. high resolution. high quality. hq hd. trending on artstation. https://lexica.art/prompt/c131cf2a-3743-4d8f-a219-2931d09a6515

Holy McDonald - An extremely psychedelic portrait of McDonalds, surreal, LSD, face, detailed, intricate, elegant, lithe, highly detailed, digital painting, artstation, concept art, smooth, sharp focus, illustration. https://lexica.art/prompt/4a33f9e6-4b56-4dd8-8f10-b67cbb424ec7

Painting of a Sandwich by MC Escher - a painting of a sandwich by m. c. escher. https://lexica.art/prompt/38d0c3f1-5ff6-4cfd-bfb0-1fe2f06304f2

Eating Disorder - “eating disorder” https://lexica.art/prompt/a65a7ad9-92f1-42b1-b7a9-9e21eaa5493a

Anatomical Diagram of Instant Ramen Cup - Maria Sibylla Merian - 2022 - anatomical diagram of instant ramen cup, by maria sibylla merian [the entire series is amazing honestly]. https://lexica.art/prompt/82394ec7-df9a-4834-b567-d433775279ff

What's Up

Pfizer denies fumes from Viagra factory are arousing town's males
Dec 2017

I'm not a doctor, but I do know how ideas get transmitted from person to person. This is a good one, so no matter what the truth behind it, it just sounds too plausible to be false.

Let's also note that Viagra is free for the residents here; it's a perk for having the manufacturing facility in their town.

On a slightly side note, in the book Everybody Lies, about google searches - places in the country where it's ok to be gay, the top search re husband is "is my husband cheating on me" but for places where it's not ok to be gay, it's "is my husband gay". Because (as far as you can trust one guy's interpretation of google results as truth) when it's not ok to be gay, you just pretend that you're not, and your wife is like wtf. [I think this was the situation reported in the book, I forget now it's been a few months.]

Similarly, I bet lots of guys in this Irish town say they don't need it, or don't use it. But it's free. It might as well be in the water supply.

Bottoms Up

Lawmakers sick after drinking raw milk to celebrate legalizing raw milk
Mar 2016, reddit

Sure this is more than a year old, but come on - does this story ever get old?

I don't think I need to explain much, because this headline says it all.

Just a couple notes on public health then. Louis Pasteur is the guy who came up with pasteurization, which is just heating your milk enough to kill the bacteria, especially the bacteria for Listeria, which can kill babies and old folks and people with compromised immune systems.

Homeopathic enthusiasts say that pasteurization kills the good bacteria with the bad, and although that may be true, most people would rather take the chance and just kill the listeria-stuff.

I went to a dairy farm in Pennsylvania this month, to take a tour. You know what's in that raw milk? Puss and blood and bacteria. You know what's even better? Every cow's milk gets poured into the same huge tanker truck to mix with each other.

If you're getting it directly from a cow that you know by name, go ahead and drink it raw. But if you're drinking it from a dairy farm like this one, you might wanna wait til it's been pasteurized.

Further, our host told us that organic dairy farming has a downside in that they aren't allowed to use antibiotics on their cows. Good right? Yes, until the cow gets sick; because cows get sick just like us. The farm I visited does use antibiotics, so if a cow gets sick, as soon as they notice it (using their hi-tech milking monitors they can tell if a cow is sick based on a drop in their milk production) they remove that cow from the group and stop milking it. If you can't use antibiotics, what do you do? You hedge your bets. You leave the cow in the group, to possibly infect other cows; and you keep milking that cow as long as you can, and risk infecting your milk. The other option is to get rid of that cow, like get it off the farm forever, which is a big loss, so why would you do that if you didn't have to.

Finally, our host also mentioned how those who own 50-cow farms all share a tanker delivery truck, but if one of them has a sick cow, and sick milk, he can ruin the whole batch. The batch gets tested and if it has the wrong number of bacteria etc., it gets denied and dumped, and everyone loses out because that one farmer tried to push milk from a cow that could have been removed from the herd while it was administered antibiotics, and then returned later.

Anyway, I don't mean to come down on organic-things, but it is good to know the whole story, especially being that 'organic' has become a selling point, which means you can expect the bad parts of the organic world to be left out of the conversation. And homeopathy, keep it coming, always really good stuff.