Month: August 2020

Surprised. It turns out it’s not disfunction, but dysfunction. And, it appears, to borne out means “proven,” because Borne is the past participle of bear, just like born, except born is used only in the sense of giving birth. I also encountered the word efficacy, which seems very similar to efficiency (doing things right, effectiveness), but in reality, it is closer to effectiveness (doing the right things, result-oriented or usefulness). In the context of medications, Efficacy shows whether a drug works under “ideal” conditions, Effectiveness shows the drug’s performance in conditions closer to real life, and Efficiency shows whether it is sensible to use the drug considering its cost, the number of potential consumers, expected treatment outcomes, and so forth.

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/dysfunction-vs-disfunction.1450998/

In trend

Why is there such caution regarding Russia’s rush to release a vaccine into the market? I read about the example of the Dengue fever vaccine released in 2016 by Sanofi Pasteur – the only one whose vaccine, Dengvaxia, was recognized as effective at an early stage by regulatory bodies in 18 countries and approved for mass use. It was created by replacing two genes in the DNA of a weakened strain of the yellow fever virus with the corresponding genes of the dengue fever virus.

Thus, human trials over six years showed that it should only be administered to those who have already once had this viral disease. In people who have never had dengue, vaccination increases the risk of severe forms of the disease, and in children under 5 years old, the likelihood of severe forms increases seven-fold (with a mortality rate of about 50%) compared with those who did not receive the vaccine (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/if-you-haven-t-had-dengue-infection-don-t-use-our-vaccine-drug-company-warns). However, the vaccine is still effective: people who have had dengue usually only develop long-term immunity against a specific type of the five existing types, but the vaccine provides protection against all variants of the dengue virus.

Another story from the fifties. Just by the way. Chemie Grünenthal released Thalidomide – a sedative. To help with sleep. And it was prescribed as an anti-emetic for morning sickness. In 1960 alone, 14.6 thousand tons of the drug were sold.

Thalidomide was described as a non-barbiturate sedative that could put the patient into a deep sleep without hangover and the risk of addiction development. This was a clear marketing advantage of the medicine over the first generation of sleeping pills. They disrupted the sleep structure and with repeated use led to an addiction development comparable to narcotics.

During testing on rodents, the median lethal dose of the drug could not be determined, so thalidomide was considered quite safe for humans. The creators of the drug did not test for harmful teratogenic effects — disruption of embryonic development. In simple terms, thalidomide was not tested on pregnant animals. There were reasons for this, but more on that below.

By various estimates, thalidomide caused severe anomalies in 8000—12000 children. About 40% of infants did not survive their first birthday. There were reports of an increased number of miscarriages during this period.”

Here are the details – https://tech.onliner.by/2019/05/11/talidomid

So, the protocols in pharmacology are “written in blood,” and ignoring them can theoretically lead to breakthroughs in science, but at the cost of human lives. During the war, Japanese and German medics discovered a lot (Google Unit 731 https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Отряд_731 and Siegfried Ruff, although it’s well compiled here: https://knife.media/mengele-731/)

I read about an interesting fact – there are single-celled plasmodiums that have learned to reproduce in a quite interesting way. They transfer from the host to a specific type of mosquito (Anopheles), which carries them to a new host, because the previous one is very likely to die soon. It is important that not just any mosquito will do, and not every bite carries the plasmodium. If there are too few bites, these plasmodiums as a species will die out. Therefore, while developing in the body of the infected host, they provoke the biosynthesis of volatile substances, the smell of which is attractive to females of a certain type of mosquito. As a result, the host becomes more appetizing, and the “right” mosquitoes bite it more often http://www.pnas.org/content/111/30/11079). In 2018, malaria infected 228 million people and killed 405,000, of which 67% were children under 5 years old. But here I am not talking about malaria, but about the intriguing transmission mechanism that has emerged as a result of millions of years of evolution.

As is known, in standard neighborhoods in the USA, it’s not customary to put up fences. Mainly because they spoil the appearance of the town, thereby reducing the price of the individual home and diminishing the overall “premiumness” of the location. Also, in many places, it is not allowed to grow vegetables and fruits in the backyard. However, when it is allowed, the backyard is often fenced off from animals, because they eat and trample everything before it can ripen for the owners.

We recently visited some acquaintances, and they have a garden in their backyard.

And I learned that from deer—which are quite plentiful everywhere around here—the minimum fence height is 2 meters 10 cm. Otherwise, they easily jump over it simply out of curiosity to see what’s behind it.

Musk has announced the presentation of a working device—a brain-computer interface called Neuralink. It will be shown on Friday at 15:00 Pacific Time (01:00 on Saturday Moscow Time). Should be interesting.

For those who do not know what this is (very long read) https://hi-news.ru/technology/neuralink-ilona-maska-chast-pervaya-koloss-chelovecheskij.html

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1298494373278220290?s=19

Recommend good nonfiction/popular science books: biology, physics, mathematics, linguistics, design, maybe history. Since the goal is to compile an order for purchasing in Russian bookstores, the main focus is on must-reads that cannot be bought in electronic form and/or in English. The last time I stocked up, I got three books by Asya Kazantseva (read them), “From Atoms to the Tree” by Sergey Yastrebov – cool book, Nora Gal “The Living and the Dead Word” (still reading), “Mysteries of Sleep” by Poluektov (almost finished), “The Origin of Language” by Burlak (reading, it’s hefty), “Entertaining Theory of Probability” (reading). Lately, I’ve been into English-language books (finishing Deadliest Enemy by Michael T. Osterholm, really cool), which is why these are lagging, but in a couple of weeks, there will be an opportunity to buy books in Russia and I don’t want to miss the chance. Already looking at nonfiction from the “Corpus” publishing house, the “Enlightener” award library, “Alpina Non-fiction”. I’d appreciate recommendations.

Lisa has gone off to college, now at nights I not only draw but also miss her. It is known, having one marker, one can draw everything except the marker itself. With two markers, you can draw absolutely everything! Lisa took her markers, so I had to buy a dozen #markersatwork #daughterleftbehind

Could you please provide the content you would like to have translated into English?

How charming, there’s a table with two benches