NOT JUST SHOWER CURTAIN RINGS?:

New 3D Bioprinter Could Build Replicas of Human Organs, Offering a Boost for Drug Discovery (Margherita Bassi, November 19, 2024, Smithsonian)

Currently, scientists have only limited ways to create tissue for testing pharmaceutical therapies, such as using lab-grown samples or by relying on traditional 3D bioprinting, per Popular Science’s Andrew Paul. However, cultivating organs in a lab is complex and expensive—and printing them is currently slow and prone to errors, such as positioning cells incorrectly.

“Incorrect cell positioning is a big reason most 3D bioprinters fail to produce structures that accurately represent human tissue,” David Collins, head of the Collins BioMicrosystems Laboratory at the University of Melbourne and a co-author of the study, says in a statement.

“But with our new approach,” Collins and two other researchers write in an article for Pursuit, “not only can we position cells with precision, we can also fabricate at a scale of single cells.”

THAT WAS EASY:

Techno-optimism: clean and free energy (jan Bosch, 18 November 2024, Bits & Chips)

First, renewable energy. Sometime in recent years, we crossed the point where solar energy became the cheapest form of energy. Cheaper than oil, gas and any other non-renewable energy source. This is quite incredible as it means that research has been driving down the cost per watt incredibly fast. In fact, the price of solar panels measured in watts per dollar follows Moore’s Law, meaning that the cost of solar energy is halved every 18 months.

We also have wind power, tidal power and several other forms of renewable energy. The cost per watt for all of them is dropping rapidly as well. Although humans naturally think linearly instead of exponentially, the cost of these renewable sources of energy is dropping exponentially toward zero due to technological innovation and economies of scale.

The main challenge is of course energy storage. Progress in battery technology is rapid but slower than for generation. But also here, the rapid electrification of vehicles is driving economies of scale that are driving down the cost of storage as well. Already now, battery systems are becoming available for stationary purposes that often have had a previous life as part of a vehicle. This allows for high cost-effectiveness as the economic life of batteries is extended significantly.

This brings us to the second main development in energy: nuclear is on the way back. New generations of nuclear reactors are available that are truly safe, much smaller and much more cost-effective than the traditional reactors. According to the research I’ve seen, nuclear actually has the lowest environmental impact of all energy sources, including solar and wind, and the lowest number of attributable deaths. Using nuclear to fill the gaps in energy generation by renewables and to address the storage challenges will be critical if we want to stop using fossil fuels.

Kind of amusing that MAGA think they can make everyone spend more on energy in perpetuity just because that hate Greens.

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

He’ll try, but Trump can’t stop the clean energy revolution (Matt Simon, Nov 11, 2024, Grist)

A core irony of climate change is that markets incentivized the wide-scale burning of fossil fuels beginning in the Industrial Revolution, creating the mess humanity is mired in, and now those markets are driving the Green Revolution that will help fix it. Coal, oil, and gas are commodities whose prices fluctuate. As natural resources that humans pull from the ground, there’s really no improving on them — engineers can’t engineer new versions of coal.

By contrast, solar panels, wind turbines, and appliances like induction stoves only get better — more efficient and cheaper — with time. Energy experts believe solar power, the price of which fell 90 percent between 2010 and 2020, will continue to proliferate across the landscape. (Last year, the United States added three times as much solar capacity as natural gas.) Heat pumps now outsell gas furnaces in the U.S., due in part to government incentives. Last year, Maine announced it had reached its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule, in part thanks to state rebates.

NEVER “JUST TRUST THE SCIENCE”:

Book Review: Why the Medical Establishment Often Gets It Wrong (Lola Butcher, 11.01.2024, UnDark)

“Much of what the public is told about health is medical dogma — an idea or practice given incontrovertible authority because someone decreed it to be true based on a gut feeling,” Makary writes.

Makary’s assertions are supported by hundreds of footnotes as he builds each indictment, but that doesn’t mean all physicians and researchers are nodding in agreement. One example: When a research team analyzed 13 studies comparing antibiotics to appendectomy, it found almost a third of the patients initially treated with antibiotics had an appendectomy within the year. Although the other two-thirds did not, the researchers called the evidence that antibiotics are better “very uncertain.” So surgeons who choose to operate immediately are not necessarily doing something wrong.

Makary, one of medicine’s most prolific iconoclasts, has been poking at America’s health care system since at least 1998 when, as a medical student, his article calling on hospitals, medical schools, and health insurance companies to divest their tobacco stocks was published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association.

A few years later, ignoring criticism from his colleagues, Makary created a checklist to improve surgery safety; after proving that safe surgery checklists reduced surgical errors and deaths, they are now used in most operating rooms around the world. His 2012 book, “Unaccountable,” demanded that hospitals reveal their infection rates and medical errors. A few years later, Medicare began requiring public reporting of those and other indicators of health care quality. His 2019 book, “The Price We Pay,” documented hospitals’ price-gouging practices and called for all hospitals to post cash prices for certain services — which is now required by law. […]

He does not call the medical establishment nefarious; rather, he accuses it of frequently embracing a narrative — that stress causes ulcers, for instance — without evidence, ignoring scientific findings that do not support the idea, and blackballing those who question their position.

HATING GREENS WON’T STOP THE LAWS OF ECONOMICS:

The Expedia of solar panels confirms new rooftop panels are more powerful than ever — and it’s leading to enormous savings: It has fueled the adoption of solar energy on an unprecedented scale. (Elijah McKee, October 28, 2024, The Cool Down)

[T]he technology is more powerful than ever, with a single cell capable of producing over 400 watts. And get this: 97% of them do exactly that — another huge step up from just four years ago, when most panels performed below that mark, according to a marketplace report by EnergySage.

This colossal evolution of solar power is not just a cool fact. It has also fueled the adoption of solar energy on an unprecedented scale and had real impacts on the financial benefits of switching residential and commercial fuse boxes over to solar.

For example, the lifetime energy savings after installing rooftop panels can now be as high as $33,000, Forbes reported.

EVERYONE WINS:

This farmer was skeptical about solar — until he began grazing sheep ( Kari Lydersen,
15 October 2024, Canary Media)

[W}hen the owner of one of those leased parcels decided to work with Acciona Energia to help site its High Point wind and solar farm, Gerlach initially was not enthusiastic.

“The thought of taking productive farm ground out of production with solar panels was not, in my personal opinion, ideal,” he said.

But Gerlach was determined to make the best of the situation.

Ultimately, that meant a win-win arrangement, where Acciona pays him to manage vegetation around the 100 MW array of solar panels that went online in early 2024. Gerlach does that with a herd of 500 sheep.

“We don’t own the land, we don’t get a say — that’s landowners’ rights, and I’m very pro that,” Gerlach recounted. ​“In U.S. agriculture, the biggest thing that gets farmers in trouble is saying ​‘that’s how we’ve always done it so that’s what we’re going to do.’ Renewable energy is probably not going anywhere, whether you’re for or against it, it’s coming, it’s what’s happening. As an agriculture producer, we’re going to adapt with it.”

THANKS, DARPA!:

Fixing typos in the book of life (Stephen McBride, October 7, 2024, Risk Hedge)

mRNA (messenger RNA) technology can turn cancer from a death sentence into a mere nuisance.

Remember, “mRNA” is the tech that helped scientists develop a COVID vaccine in record time. Please, don’t hate mRNA because of how governments + big pharma forced these vaccines on us.

mRNA really is a game-changing tech with incredible promise. For cancer, it can prime our bodies to seek and destroy solid tumors not easily cured with surgery, and without the nasty side effects of chemo.

These cancer-killing jabs are only in the trial phase. But the results are extremely promising.

What’s even more promising is mRNA vaccines for pancreatic… colorectal… metastatic… and lung cancer are all showing positive results in trials, too. What if mRNA is the “skeleton key” that helps us cure every cancer?

I love how my friend Matt Ridley describes mRNA: “Synthetic messengers that reprogram our cells to mount an immune response to almost any invader, including perhaps cancer, can now be rapidly and cheaply made.”

IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

Worldview may have more impact on mental health than chemical imbalances – study (Ryan Foley, 30 September 2024, Christianity Today)

The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University released the study Tuesday, attributing the rise in mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression and fear, to what researcher George Barna calls “worldview deficiencies” rather than “psychological or chemical imbalances.”

The findings are based on interviews conducted in January with 2,000 U.S. adults aged 18 or older, with a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

The report highlighted mental health struggles among younger generations, noting that 56% of Generation Z and 49% of millennials regularly experience anxiety, fear or depression. Generation Z refers to the youngest group of American adults, while millennials are defined as those born between 1984 and 2002. In total, one in three adults from these generations has at least one diagnosable mental disorder.

JUST DON’T CALL IT SYSTEMIC:

The Downstream Effects of Fixing a Racist Lung Test (Felice J. Freyer, Harvard Public Health, 09.24.2024, UnDark)

Before, the computer program that assessed lung function sorted patients into one of four categories: Caucasian, Black, Asian, or Hispanic. It automatically lowered the threshold for what is “normal” for Black and Asian patients. It’s a startling example of how racial bias has literally been written into the machinery of 21st-century health care and how formulas based on supposed racial differences have skewed decision-making in many corners of medicine. Boston Medical Center is among the institutions working to address this problem, after an April 2023 recommendation by the American Thoracic Society that laboratories adopt a race-neutral algorithm, or set of rules, for assessments. But with thousands of lung-function laboratories and clinics scattered across the country, the movement for change faces manifold obstacles and thorny consequences.

Applying the race-neutral algorithm means broadly that Black patients will be deemed sicker and White ones healthier than before. A higher proportion of Black people (and, to a lesser extent, Asians) will be designated impaired — which could make them ineligible for certain occupations but increase their access to disability benefits, additional testing, and referral for lung transplants. White people will experience the opposite, with some potentially seeing their disability benefits reduced or eliminated.

BUT THEN, YOU KNEW THAT ALREADY…:

Even solar energy’s biggest fans are underestimating it: Solar’s extraordinary forecast-defying growth, explained. (Umair Irfan, Sep 20, 2024, Vox

“Solar does continue to surprise us,” said Gregory Nemet, who wrote How Solar Energy Became Cheap, in an email. “It seems like it shouldn’t at this point. It’s been roughly 30 percent growth each year for 30 years. And costs continue to fall so new users — and new uses — continue to emerge.”

In the past year, solar power has experienced Brobdingnagian growth, even by solar standards. According to a new report from Ember, an energy think tank, the world is on track to install 29 percent more solar energy capacity this year — a total of 593 gigawatts — compared to last year, which was already a record year. This is more than one-quarter of the electricity produced by every operating coal plant in the world combined. In 2020, the whole world had installed just 760 GW of solar in total.