Michael Le Page

NEW – CCC: Net-zero will protect UK from fossil-fuel price shocks | @mollylempriere.carbonbrief.org

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Human populations evolved in similar ways after we began farming An analysis of ancient and modern DNA suggests the extent of convergent evolution in different peoples around the world is even greater than we thought

To me, this shows the how genetic connections 🧬 between peoples can go beyond our shared ancestry. We also have similar or even identical genetic changes because of our shared lifestyles - that is, separate groups of modern humans evolved in similar ways 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2518...

Lobbyists send legal threats to councils over anti-wood burner campaigns At least eight councils receive legal threats alleging flyers criticising wood burners are in breach of advertising codes

Lobbyists for the UK wood-burning stove industry threaten councils with legal action over public information campaigns on the harms of #airpollution

- "Straight from the playbook of tobacco" says Jemima Hartshorn, at Mums for Lungs

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

On the other hand, the size of the effect was tiny and it was measured using epigenetic clocks 🕚 whose relevance to human health isn't clear

The team estimate the slowing of epigenetic clocks equates to four months less ageing over two years but I'm told such estimates are problematic 2/

A daily multivitamin may slightly slow rates of ageing Taking a multivitamin every day might slightly slow the rate of ageing, but the extent to which this is relevant to our health is unclear

Does taking multivitamins & minerals 💊 slow down ageing? Maybe a tiny bit, a study of people with an average age of 70 suggests 🧪

On the one hand, this was a rigorous study - a double-blinded, randomised controlled trial 1/

www.newscientist.com/article/2518...

I'm liking the glass half-full interpretation more:

"Eric Atwell... quantifies the discovery as perhaps raising a 0.0001 per cent chance of finding an alien signal to 0.0002 per cent" 🧪

The growing threat of domestic wood burning stoves—and industry’s legal attempts to shut down clean air campaigns As public health officials warn about rising emissions from urban wood burning, a BMJ investigation finds that just under a third of councils in high use areas have faced pressure from the stove indus...

The growing threat of domestic wood burning stoves - and the industry's legal attempts to shut down clean air campaigns BMJ

#AirPollution #WoodBurning #Health
www.bmj.com/content/392/...

Rare family has had many more sons than daughters for generations Analysing the births of a Utah family over seven generations has revealed that their disproportionate number of boys could be caused by a selfish Y chromosome

You probably know of a family 👪 where the children are always boys, or always girls

In most cases, this is just chance but for one family in Utah a selfish Y chromosome 🧬 might be to blame 🧪

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

Sea levels around the world are much higher than we thought Most coastal risk assessments have underestimated current sea levels, meaning tens of millions of people face losing their homes to rising waters earlier than expected

99% of research on sea level rise impacts got current sea level wrong (!).
That doesn't mean projections of <1m of sea level rise by 2100 are incorrect.
But it does mean the consequences of this rise will happen sooner, since we're starting from a higher baseline www.newscientist.com/article/2517...

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....

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...