Michael Le Page

Catastrophic, publication-ending numbers

I have just sent the following email to my Labour MP, Jeff Smith. Text is in Alt - feel free to use/adapt it. But whatever the case, write to your MP!

The surprising vaccine side effects that can improve long-term health People often focus on the bad side effects of vaccines, but they can have some great side effects too, says columnist Michael Le Page. They don’t just protect us from contagious diseases but can also ...

Yes, vaccines 💉 can have adverse side effects, tho these are much lower than the risks of the diseases they protect against

What we tend to overlook is that vaccines can also have beneficial side effects, which can be surprisingly large 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

Ocean geoengineering trial finds no evidence of harm to marine life Pouring 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine removed up to 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere without harming wildlife, according to the researchers behind an ocean al...

Can we remove CO2 from the atmosphere and counter ocean acidification by geoengineering? 🧪

The first ship-borne trial of ocean alkalinity enhancement found the seas did take up CO2 with no negative effects on marine life but big questions remain #OSM26

www.newscientist.com/article/2517...

Is geothermal energy on the cusp of a worldwide renaissance? The UK's first geothermal plant in Cornwall is part of a wave of projects aiming to meet growing electricity demand, some of them enabled by technology from oil and gas fracturing

A boom in geothermal energy has been 10 years away for 50 years.
Now it may finally be here: Data centers have boosted demand, & tech from the fracking industry has unlocked geothermal supply.
Today the UK starts up its 1st geothermal power plant. www.newscientist.com/article/2517...

I'm sorry, we don't have that

In my piece on vaccine benefits I mention some of the reasons why this notion that infection is better than vaccination is so wildly wrong and utterly bonkers

One is that many viruses - including measles - do long-term damage to your immune system

www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

The surprising vaccine side effects that can improve long-term health People often focus on the bad side effects of vaccines, but they can have some great side effects too, says columnist Michael Le Page. They don’t just protect us from contagious diseases but can also ...

Yes, vaccines 💉 can have adverse side effects, tho these are much lower than the risks of the diseases they protect against

What we tend to overlook is that vaccines can also have beneficial side effects, which can be surprisingly large 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

🧪

RNA strand that can almost self-replicate may be key to life's origins Life may have begun when RNA molecules began to replicate themselves, and now we’ve finally found an RNA molecule that is very close to being able to do this

How life began? We've evolved an RNA that can carry out all the steps needed to copy itself, tho not yet all at once 🧪

What's really impressing biologists is how small it is - smaller molecules are more likely to arise spontaneously

www.newscientist.com/article/2515...

Welcome to the light side

It’s not an artificial virus. There’s no genetic material inside it, so no infectious ability or capacity to evolve

This state’s power prices are plummeting as it nears 100% renewables South Australia is proving to the world that relying largely on wind and solar energy with battery back-up is incredibly cheap, with electricity prices tumbling by 30 per cent in a year and sometimes ...

Oh look, going renewable really does lower energy prices, like everyone's been saying it will - except oil and gas companies and all the politicians in their pay

By my colleague Alice Klein

www.newscientist.com/article/2514...

Gene editing that spreads within the body could cure more diseases The idea of self-amplifying gene editing is to get cells to pass on packages of CRISPR machinery to their neighbours, boosting the effect

A big challenge for CRISPR gene editing 🧬 is altering a high enough proportion of target cells in the body 🧪

So @doudna-lab.bsky.social have developed editors that can amplify themselves by spreading from cell to cell

Comment from @gaetanburgio.bsky.social

www.newscientist.com/article/2514...

Olympic commentator “it’s natural talent… his parents were great skaters too”

Ffs, we’re so blind to privilege

Things that reduces the energy generation of solar panels, like less sunshine, will also usually reduce crop yields ie crops also have a capacity factor

Actually, I suspect this understates the case because it doesn’t take the inefficiency of internal combustion engines into account

And if you want to have a look through the list yourself, it's here: 3/

arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/protect....

Thanks for noticing and asking. It started as an answer to questions arising from my lectures : #1 Are all rare alleles deleterious? #2 Isn't evolution based on helpful mutations ? #3 Should we recruit volunteers to PGP who have exceptional protection from otherwise harmful environmental or genetic backgrounds? #4 When people worry about (or seek out) "enhancements", what might these be? (Surely something harder to achieve than say blond hair? Recently the list seems to be inspiring newcos aiming for enhanced sleep, peace, hygiene, blood, deaging, space adaptations, etc --George Church

While researching it, I failed to find a clear statement from Church on why he set up and maintains this list, so I asked. I didn't have space for his full answer in my column, so thought I'd post it here for the record: 🧪 2/

(PGP = Personal Genome Project)

In my last column I explored the prospects for genetically enhancing 🧬 humans, with a look through the famous list of rare protective variants with large effects maintained by George Church 1/

www.newscientist.com/article/2513...

If only we lived in the Milliverse already...

Podcast!
💥Elon Musk's proposal for orbital data centres
💥Kids ODing on melatonin-laced gummies
💥Global pesticide threat is growing
open.spotify.com/episode/0EUy... with @pennysarchet.bsky.social, @astrojonny.bsky.social @mjflepage.bsky.social

Why exercise isn't much help if you are trying to lose weight When we exercise more, our bodies may compensate by using less energy for other things – especially if we eat less too

When we exercise more 🏃‍♀️ our bodies save energy in other ways - and if we eat less at the same time this can complete cancel out the energy spent exercising 🧪

Exercise has many other benefits, of c.

www.newscientist.com/article/2514600-why-exercise-isnt-much-help-if-you-are-trying-to-lose-weight/

The toxic burden of pesticides is growing all around the world Pesticides are becoming more toxic and just about every country is using more of them year after year, despite a UN target to halve the overall risk by 2030

At a 2022 UN biodiversity meeting countries agreed to halve the "overall risks" of pesticides by 2030 but failed to say what this means 🧪

Now a measure of the risks of pesticides has been developed - and they are increasing in almost every country

www.newscientist.com/article/2514...

500 homes, local habitats and wildlife will benefit from Epping Forest ‘leaky dams’ project 374 new purposefully designed ‘leaky dams’ are being installed across Epping Forest – making it the largest natural flood-management project of its kind in the southeast.The scheme will reduce flood risk for over 500 homes by slowing peak flows during heavy rainfall and bring a range of ecological benefits to the Forest.City Corporation in...

Beavers would build leaky dams for free and maintain them 24/7

news.cityoflondon.gov.uk/500-homes-lo...

YouTube video by Dave Brubeck Desmond: Take Five / The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Live in Belgium, 1964

Had to listen to the whole thing www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXi3...

California child dies from measles-related complications A school-age child who contracted measles as an infant died from a rare complication after initially recovering from the infection.

And the ticking time bomb of SSPE (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subacut... ) where 1 in 600 infants who get measles get a ticking time bomb planted in their brain that kills them YEARS later publications.aap.org/aapnews/news...

As good as the Icelandic ones?

CRISPR grapefruit without the bitterness are now in development Gene-editing citrus fruits to make them less bitter could not only encourage more people to eat them, it might also help save the industry from a devastating plague  

How non-bitter CRISPR grapefruit could be the first step towards a future in which citrus fruits like oranges 🍊 are grown in temperate regions like the UK rather than subtropical places like Florida 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2513...

Can we genetically improve humans using George Church’s famous list? Columnist Michael Le Page delves into a catalogue of hundreds of potentially beneficial gene mutations and variants that is popular with transhumanists

Could we genetically enhance 🧬 our kids if we wanted to, as the startup Bootstrap Bio wants to do? 🧪

In my latest column I take a look at what might be possible now:

www.newscientist.com/article/2513...