DNA trying to tell us something

Synthetic double-helix faithfully stores Shakespeare's sonnets 

This was a surprising story:

A team of scientists has produced a truly concise anthology of verse by encoding all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets in DNA. The researchers say that their technique could easily be scaled up to store all of the data in the world.

Along with the sonnets, the team encoded a 26-second audio clip from Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream" speech, a copy of James Watson and Francis Crick’s classic paper on the structure of DNA, a photo of the researchers' institute and a file that describes how the data were converted. The researchers report their results today on Nature’s website¹.

The project, led by Nick Goldman of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) at Hinxton, UK, marks another step towards using nucleic acids as a practical way of storing information — one that is more compact and durable than current media such as hard disks or magnetic tape.

Here's the  most amazing part:

DNA packs information into much less space than other media. For example, CERN, the European particle-physics lab near Geneva, currently stores around 90 petabytes of data on some 100 tape drives. Goldman’s method could fit all of those data into 41 grams of DNA.

 Lots more detail of how it is done is in the article.  As to its potential long term value:

Goldman adds that DNA storage should be apocalypse-proof. After a hypothetical global disaster, future generations might eventually find the stores and be able to read them. “They’d quickly notice that this isn’t DNA like anything they’ve seen,” says Goldman. “There are no repeats, and everything is the same length. It’s obviously not from a bacterium or a human. Maybe it’s worth investigating.”

I wonder if this means there might be a short to medium length message put there by my Creator for use at about this time in history.  "Don't buy Betamax" maybe*.
 
Has science fiction ever covered this?  The nearest I can think of is the ending of Carl Sagan's "Contact", where a message is found hidden inside of Pi.

*  A joke stolen from Good Omens.

Maybe built that way?

Chameleon pulsar baffles astronomers

An international team has made a tantalizing discovery about the way pulsars emit radiation. The emission of X-rays and radio waves by these pulsating neutron stars is able to change dramatically in seconds, simultaneously, in a way that cannot be explained with current theory. It suggests a quick change of the entire magnetosphere....

Pulsars are small spinning stars that are about the size of a city, around 20 km in diameter. They emit oppositely directed beams of radiation from their magnetic poles. Just like a lighthouse, as the star spins and the beam sweeps repeatedly past the Earth we see a brief flash.

Some pulsars produce radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including at X-ray and radio wavelengths. Despite being discovered more than 45 years ago the exact mechanism by which pulsars shine is still unknown.

It has been known for some time that some radio-emitting pulsars flip their behaviour between two (or even more) states, changing the pattern and intensity of their radio pulses. The moment of flip is both unpredictable and sudden. It is also known from satellite-borne telescopes that a handful of radio pulsars can also be detected at X-ray frequencies. However, the X-ray signal is so weak that nothing is known of its variability.

To find out if the X-rays could also flip the scientists studied a particular pulsar called PSR B0943+10, one of the first to be discovered. It has radio pulses which change in form and brightness every few hours with some of the changes happening within about a second.

Dr Ben Stappers from The University of Manchester's School of Physics and Astronomy said: "The behaviour of this pulsar is quite startling, it's as if it has two distinct personalities. As PSR B0943+10 is one of the few pulsars also known to emit X-rays, finding out how this higher energy radiation behaves as the radio changes could provide new insight into the nature of the emission process."...

Geoff Wright from the University of Sussex adds: "Our observations strongly suggest that a temporary "hotspot" appears close to the pulsar's magnetic pole which switches on and off with the change of state. But why a pulsar should undergo such dramatic and unpredictable changes is completely unknown."

Bat family life

Bats split on family living

An odd report here on how one species of bat has different family arrangements depending on where they live.  That seems unusual.

This part suggests that bat bachelors are unlike human ones:

"But it is also possible that the males choose not to roost with the females. When you look at the nursery colony in Ilkley, mothers and pups often have a lot of ectoparasites like ticks and mites. In a warm, crowded nursery, parasites can thrive, especially if there's less time for good personal hygiene. Parasites not only make life uncomfortable but can affect a bat's health. The males that live by themselves are usually very clean in their bachelor pads, so you can understand why they might not want to move in," he added.

I continue to be amazed at how black flying foxes in the colony I pass every day still hang around in the summer sun instead of going for shadier trees.

When the American Right used to be sensible

7 uncovered quotes that reveal just how crazy the NRA’s become - Salon.com

I like this one in particular:

“There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons,” said California Gov. Ronald Reagan in May 1967, after two dozen Black Panther Party members walked into the California Statehouse carrying rifles to protest a gun-control bill. Reagan said guns were “a ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.”

 This article notes that Reagan then swung around to be very pro-gun rights in 1975 in "his column"  in Guns and Ammo magazine, but post presidency he swung again:

The Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 will be remembered as an important piece of legislation for gun rights. However, Reagan also cast his support behind the two most controversial pieces of gun control legislation of the past 30 years. His support of the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 may have directly led to the ban winning the approval of Congress. Congress passed the ban by a vote of 216-214. In addition to Klug voting for the ban after Reagan’s last minute plea, Rep. Dick Swett, D-N.H., also credited Reagan’s support of the bill for helping him decide to cast a favorable vote.

Does the NRA blame Alzheimer's Disease for his later support of gun control, I wonder?  I see from this article that he was not formally diagnosed with it until 2004, even though many suspect he started to suffer from it during his second term.  (That linked article makes out a pretty convincing sounding case that he was, actually.) 

A spot of good news

With group effort, Japan suicides fall to 15-year low - CSMonitor.com

Of minor interest:

“As they keep blaming themselves for business failure, saying, ‘I’ve done wrong’ or ‘I’ve caused trouble to society,’ that totally impairs their judgment,” says Hisao Sato who started a suicide prevention program in 2002 in Akita city, some 720 miles north of Tokyo. The region is notorious for being home to the highest suicide rates.

I've been within 80 km or so of Akita quite a few times but never visited it.   I am told there is not much there, but it is such a lonely looking corner of the country I've always felt it would welcome my presence as an international tourist.  It is also close to a Marian apparition, complete with weeping statue.  (Mind you, we briefly had one of those in a Brisbane suburb a few years ago, and I went and had a look.  I think I have mentioned that before.)

A look at Hare Krishna

My years as a Hare Krishna

This is an interesting account of a woman who got into Hare Krishna but who has now moved away from it.  She's still sympathetic to the religion, though.

I note that she was obviously no stranger to recreational drug taking before she got into it.  I have a family member who is (last I heard) still in the religion, who came to it with some recreational drug experience (of a worrying degree, apparently.  I don't know the full details, though.)

I guess this is of no great surprise:  I tend to think anyone who tries anything more psychoactive than, say, marijuana, is showing signs of spiritual aimlessness which a strong communitarian religious practice like Hare Krishna is able to address.  (Gee, I still don't like using the word "spiritual".)  

Anyhow, one of the comments that follow the article is cruel, but funny:

I used to live over the back fence from a Hare Krisna house in Brisbane - 24 hour cycle chanting hare krisna, hare krisna, hare rama, rama rama etc. - so I got to know the words.

My take was it suited wimpy directionless people attracted to traditional conservative roles with an appearance of something special and different

Just when you thought nuclear holocaust had gone away...

Nuclear war accidents: Minutemen missiles in silos should be abolished. - Slate Magazine

Ros Rosenbaum argues that the risk of an accidental nuclear exchange is still high, particularly from the land based Minuteman missiles.   Computers are now a large part of the problem:

The silo-based missiles have been "detargeted," we've been told, but can easily be retargeted in seconds with a burst of code containing—say, Moscow's GPS coordinates. They've been detargeted but not de-alerted (something I called for back 2008 in Slate). They're still ready to go, at a moment's notice, vulnerable to hackers despite the claims by some security experts they're "air gapped from the internet"—but think USB sticks.

Nobody has yet explained the incident in late 2010 when 50 nuclear missiles in Wyoming stopped responding to the C3I system for a frightening period of time. The Pentagon hastened to say, hey, no problem, don’t worry that our computer system isn't capable of error-proof command and control of 50 nuclear missiles for just a little while. The episode was not confidence-inducing, and it reminded us how much world-destroying power is entrusted to glitch-prone computer architecture. The fact that this sensational story was virtually ignored is further evidence of head-in-the sand consciousness we have about nuclear power. 

When I discussed the matter of our "launch posture" with a Pentagon general who specialized in nuclear affairs, he refused to say whether these missiles could still be launched on the basis of "dual phenomenology." This obfuscatory euphemism means that once we receive signals from two electronic tracking systems—radar and satellite—that something on the screens looks like an attack, we'd face the "use it or lose it" choice. We'd have to "launch on warning" before we knew that the warnings were not "false positives" like the flock of geese. Fortunately, it's unlikely there could be two simultaneous false positives in our dual phenomenology, but a statistician's analysis has argued that eventually it would happen. One prominent statistics expert, Martin Hellman, one of the inventors of the "trap door" and "public key" methods of encryption for the Internet, calculated a 1-in-10 chance of a nuclear exchange in the next decade, and Scientific American put it at a not-so-reassuring 1-in-30 for the same period.

Bad news from the Andes

Unprecedented glacier melting in the Andes blamed on climate change

While judging what's going on with glaciers in the Himalayas seems to be quite tricky, it has always seemed that the fate of South American glaciers has been clearer.  And it does have serious implications for water supply:

The Santa River valley in Peru will be most affected, as its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants heavily rely on glacier water for agriculture, domestic consumption, and hydropower. Large cities, such as La Paz in Bolivia, could also face shortages. "Glaciers provide about 15% of the La Paz water supply throughout the year, increasing to about 27% during the dry season," says Alvaro Soruco, a Bolivian researcher who took part in the study.

I should also mention that this is one reason I liked Quantum of Solace:  the writers seemed to be well aware of climate change causing problems in that part of the world, and hence the evil scheme to store desperately needed water underground kinda made sense.

An interesting list

What doctors won't do | Life and style | The Guardian

I don't know how came up with the idea for this, but it's interesting to read a list of medical things doctors would not do.

PSA testing gets a mention more than once...

The cold up there explained

Stratospheric Phenomenon Is Bringing Frigid Cold to U.S | Climate Central

People don't like The Bunker

King George Square designer wouldn't change a thing despite calls to bring back the grass  | The Courier-Mail

Obviously, it's not just me then.

I reckon the redesigned King George Square in the heart of Brisbane is a horrendous hot, glare-y and unwelcoming space which people scuttle across as soon as possible to avoid heat stroke, with lines that make it look like there's a bomb shelter beneath it.

Many people seem to agree.

In fact, I have long thought that Brisbane's general appearance took a turn for the worse under Campbell Newman as Lord Mayor.   I never liked his predecessor Jim Soorley at a personal level, but at least he seemed to have a team of urban designers who had decent ideas for the look of the city.  I think Newman  is a typical engineer;  all interested in efficiency and machines, but wouldn't recognize pleasing aesthetic design if it bit him.

More details needed

Spacecraft caused car crash, say pair

Here's a peculiar story from just outside of Brisbane that happened last weekend.  Surely if they were genuine, one of the guys involved is going to turn up on TV to explain more?:

TWO men who walked away from a car crash near Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam claimed to be chasing an alien spacecraft when found by police.

Police and the driver's insurance company received several sketchy phone calls from the men, who appeared to be convinced paranormal activity caused the crash.

Police received the first call from the men at 2.25am on Friday, saying they had been in an accident at Split Yard Creek and asked for the RAAF to attend...

Police said the conversations with the men were vague and at times barely understandable.

The men began to ''freak out'', telling the insurance company they were about to disappear and referred to the area as the Bermuda Triangle, police said.

Police called the men back, with the second male answering the phone, telling police there were ''some really weird things going on'' and they had abandoned the car.

Police received another call from the men at 4am, claiming that ''something paranormal'' had occurred and ''big bright lights'' caused the car accident.

Police found the men at 4.10am at the intersection of Wivenhoe-Somerset and Hyne roads. They were armed with knives and appeared to be protecting themselves.

The men became aggressive, claiming ''there were more of them around''.
The car's driver was breathalysed. He was over the limit and given a notice to appear in court.

The drink driving offence doesn't necessarily mean much with our .05 limit.  Drunks rarely freak out that way anyway, I reckon.   I have a hunch there might have been more in their system than alcohol, but I would like to be wrong.

Sauerkraut, scurvy and Australia Day

Why sauerkraut is good for you | Life and style | The Guardian

...as long as you choose the unpasteurised sort, sauerkraut is teeming with beneficial lactobacillus bacteria – more than is in live yoghurt – which increase the healthy flora in the intestinal tract.

But where does one get unpasteurised sauerkraut?  Surely the stuff in tins or jars doesn't count?

In fact, the article does point out:

Do not confuse sauerkraut with vinegary, pickled cabbage.

I am not sure now whether I have had proper sauerkraut or not.  The real stuff sounds as if it is easy to make at home:

Sauerkraut is made by lactic fermentation, an age-old technique now in vogue for its health benefits. The necessary bacteria and yeasts are naturally present on cabbage leaves. Apart from salt, which starts the process, no other ingredients are required. So avoid buying brands with added chemical preservatives.

This all reminds me;  I didn't know until the visit to the replica Endeavour in Sydney a couple of years ago that Captain Cook had sauerkraut on board to help ward off scurvy.  According to this detailed BBC history article, it's not clear how successful it was.

Scurvy sure doesn't sound pleasant to see:

Their symptoms were vividly described by Richard Walter, the chaplain who wrote up the official account of the voyage. Here were descriptions of its ghastly traces: skin black as ink, ulcers, difficult respiration, rictus of the limbs, teeth falling out and, perhaps most revolting of all, a strange plethora of gum tissue sprouting out of the mouth, which immediately rotted and lent the victim's breath an abominable odour.

 But there's more:

There were strange sensory and psychological effects too. Scurvy seems to have disarmed the sensory inhibitors that keep taste, smell and hearing under control and stop us from feeling too much. When sufferers got hold of the fruit they had been craving they swallowed it (said Walter) 'with emotions of the most voluptuous luxury'. The sound of a gunshot was enough to kill a man in the last stages of scurvy, while the smell of blossoms from the shore could cause him to cry out in agony. This susceptibility of the senses was accompanied by a disposition to cry at the slightest disappointment, and to yearn hopelessly and passionately for home.

Now we know that scurvy was a cocktail of vitamin deficiencies, mainly of C and B, sometimes compounded by an overdose of A from eating seals' livers. Altogether these produced a breakdown in the cellular structure of the body, evident in the putrescence of the flesh and bones of sufferers, together with night blindness and personality disorders associated with pellagra. In the 18th century no one knew what caused scurvy, whose symptoms were so various it was sometimes mistaken for asthma, leprosy, syphilis, dysentery and madness.

The article points out that, although it had been worked out that citrus juice prevented it, Cook believed it was malt that was keeping his men (relatively) healthy.   In fact, it doesn't mention Cook having citrus on board at all.   I thought he did?

Ah, here we go.  Another article about Cook and scurvy, pointing out that he took "rob":

 
But, the author tells us, there probably was enough useful vitamin C in the Sour Krout (amusingly, that's apparently the spelling at the time) to be an "anti-scorbutic."  Cook used psychology to get the crew to eat it:

It goes on to note that Cook knew that fresh vegetables of most kinds would cure it:

Despite this, some on the voyage did have trouble with the scurvy, including Banks himself:

Well, I think we've all learnt something tonight....

Update:  It's occurred to me that Australians underappreciate the importance of sauerkraut in the maritime exploration of Australia, so I have changed the title.   I suggest making sure some sauerkraut is available at the Australia day bar-b-q this weekend, and if anyone asks why, feel free to quote from this post in your best Robert Hughes imitation voice.

About comedians

Alan Davies interview: 'I'm like a fine wine. I'm maturing' | Media | The Guardian

Alan Davies makes an interesting comment in this interview:

During his career he has seen plenty of clowns who could also benefit from time on an analyst's couch: "There are two types of comedians, self-harmers and golfers. The second lot are out on the golf course, they love being famous, playing golf, having their Rolls-Royce and house in Barbados, with no guilt. For others there is a sense that you had to pay your dues – 'my life is shit'. Why not just play golf and enjoy it?"

I see he is aged 46.  I'm not sure if he seems that age or not.

The Right in the US has gone nuts - Part Whatever

Noonan: His Terms Are Always Hostile Ones - WSJ.com

Peggy Noonan, who I don't read all that often, but who has seemed at times to represent moderate Republicanism reasonably well,  has well and truly decided she's on side with the nutty Tea Party wing of the Republicans after all:

President Obama has been using the days and weeks leading up to his inauguration to show the depth of his disdain for the leaders of the other major party and, by inference, that party's voters, which is to say more or less half the country. He has been spending his time alienating instead of summoning. It has left the political air more sour and estranged. 

As a presidential style this is something strange and new. That has to be said again: It is new, and does not augur well. 

 What was remarkable about the president's news conference Monday is that he didn't seem to think he had to mask his partisan rancor or be large-spirited. He bristled with unashamed hostility for Republicans on the Hill.  They are holding the economy "ransom," they are using the threat of "crashing the American economy" as "leverage," some are "absolutist" while others are "consumed with partisan brinkmanship." They are holding "a gun at the head of the American people." And what is "motivating and propelling" them is not a desire for debt reduction, as they claim. They are "suspicious about government's commitment . . . to make sure that seniors have decent health care as they get older. They have suspicions about Social Security. They have suspicions about whether government should make sure that kids in poverty are getting enough to eat, or whether we should be spending money on medical research." 

And yet, "when I'm over here at the congressional picnic and folks are coming up and taking pictures with their family, I promise you, Michelle and I are very nice to them."

You're nice to them? To people who'd take food from the mouths of babes? 

Then, grimly: "But it doesn't prevent them from going onto the floor of the House and blasting me for being a big-spending socialist." Conservative media outlets "demonize" the president, he complained, and so Republican legislators fear standing near him.

If Richard Nixon talked like that, they'd have called him paranoid and self-pitying. Oh wait . . .

 I'm happy to allow that Obama is not, and never was, the Messiah.  He may have a big streak of vanity for all I know.

But  Noonan's shock and outrage that Obama is telling Republicans that he doesn't think they are acting in good faith and criticising their 4 years of over-the-topic hyperbole and crank theories - that is ridiculous in the extreme.   Republicans have been absurd in the way they have argued under Obama - everything is "socialism", "death panels" (you don't need links for those, surely), "treason", deserving impeachment; even when the ideas under discussion are ones that Republicans at the State level have implemented and only now being expanded to the Federal level (Romney and health care; the contraceptive mandate in many States, Republicans in the New York Senate on gun control.)  The hypocrisy and hyperbole of the Republicans over the last 4 years has been breathtaking.

And as for the President's recommendations on gun control - Noonan thinks they are OK, but still has to struggle to find a way to criticise him:

His gun-control recommendations themselves seemed, on balance, reasonable and moderate. I don't remember that the Second Amendment died when Bill Clinton banned assault rifles; it seemed to thrive, and good, too. That ban shouldn't have been allowed to expire in 2004.

What was offensive about the president's recommendations is what they excluded. He had nothing to say about America's culture of violence—its movies, TV shows and videogames. Excuse me, there will be a study of videogames; they are going to do "research" on whether seeing 10,000 heads explode on video screens every day might lead unstable young men to think about making heads explode. You'll need a real genius to figure that out.

The president at one point asked congressmen in traditionally gun-supporting districts to take a chance, do the right thing and support some limits. But when it comes to challenging Hollywood—where he traditionally gets support, and from which he has taken great amounts of money for past campaigns and no doubt will for future libraries—he doesn't seem to think he has to do the right thing. He doesn't even have to talk about it. It wouldn't be good to have Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino running around shouting "First Amendment, slippery slope!" or have various powerful and admired actors worrying their brows, to the extent their brows can be worried.

What, pray tell, does Noonan think a President can do, exactly, about cinema violence?  (And putting Steven Spielberg in there as if his movies have been groundbreaking in the gratuitous gun violence stakes is ridiculous.   The trend was really started by Right wing Hollywood figures, if you ask me.)

Noonan's commentary has therefore officially become nuts.  The list of moderate Right wing commentary worth reading has become vanishingly small.

A mild dose

I mentioned a couple of posts back that I was having an interesting viral infection.   It's shingles - the illness you can get years after you've had chickenpox, when the varicella-zoster virus comes out of its hiding place on your nerves and gives you a skin rash with possible complications.

I don't like the way certain viruses do that "never leave your system" trick.  Like most in my family, I'm unlucky enough to get cold sores too, so now I've got two herpes related viruses always hanging around waiting to re-emerge if feeling run down.  (In fact, now that I think of it, how come people like me don't always get a break out of cold sores at the same time that they get shingles - both are thought to be related to the immune system dipping a bit.)

My chickenpox experience was as an adult and was of average unpleasantness, I guess.  My Mum had an attack of shingles in her 50's and it bothered her quite a bit for a couple of months; I remember David Letterman had one a decade or more ago which kept him off TV for a while.  So I was generally aware of the illness.  (One website says about 1 in 5 adults in Australia will have an attack.)

On Monday last week I noticed an itch on my back.  It felt a bit unusual, and looking in the mirror it seemed to be in a smallish oval red patch just off the spine, but I thought the redness may have just have been from scratching.  It was still looking like a rash on Tuesday evening though, and after checking some photos on the internet of what a shingles rash could look like, I headed off the GP.

He seemed to very much doubt it was shingles, as it was only moderately itchy, and didn't have any pain or much in the way of "pins and needles" feeling.   Anyway, he took a swab and gave me a week long course of anti-viral tablets just to be safe.

Over the next day or two, I asked everyone at work about whether they had shingles, and whether they had much pain with it.  As with the doctor, everyone I spoke to had the attitude "I think you'd really know about it if it was shingles - it's pretty painful."  Yet I was continuing with just mild itchiness.

The GP rang a couple of nights later and said the test was positive for the virus - it was shingles; just a very mild case apparently.  So I'll continue my anti-virals for a couple more days and just hope that is as bad as it gets.   (The rash is now less distinct and less itchy, but still there.)

I've had a look around at stuff on the internet about shingles.  I see that there is a vaccine they can give now for those aged over 60, when the complications can be worse.   But the most interesting thing I read was this - about how it is not clear whether widespread childhood immunisation against chickenpox may actually lead to more cases of adult shingles.  (I'll add a couple of the earlier paragraphs which set the scene before the most interesting bit):

 The varicella-zoster virus (VZV) is so named because it causes two distinct illnesses: varicella (chickenpox), following primary infection, and herpes zoster (shingles), following reactivation of latent virus....

  Herpes zoster or shingles is a sporadic disease, caused by reactivation of latent VZV in sensory nerve ganglia. It is usually self-limiting and is characterised by severe pain with dermatomal distribution, sometimes followed by post-herpetic neuralgia which can be chronic and debilitating in the elderly.^10,11 Although herpes zoster can occur at any age, most cases occur after the age of 50 with the incidence of complications also increasing with age.¹² However, children infected in utero or those who acquire varicella before the age of 1 year, and patients on immunosuppressive drugs or infected with human immunodeficiency virus, are also at increased risk of herpes zoster.^13–15 A new herpes zoster vaccine which is over 60% effective in reducing the burden of herpes zoster and post-herpetic neuralgia¹⁶ has been available on the private market in Australia since 2008. The zoster vaccine is formulated from the same VZV strain (Oka-derived) as the licensed varicella (chickenpox) vaccines but is of higher potency (at least 14 times greater).

  In 1952, Hope-Simpson proposed the hypothesis that exposure to varicella may boost immunity against herpes zoster.²⁰ There is increasing evidence to support that hypothesis, with two observational studies showing lower rates of herpes zoster in groups who have been exposed to varicella.^21,22 If exposure to wild varicella provides boosting and protection against activation of herpes zoster, universal infant varicella vaccination and the subsequent decline in wild varicella may result in an increase in herpes zoster incidence among those previously infected.²³ Mathematical modelling has also suggested that widespread infant varicella vaccination might result in a significant increase in the incidence of herpes zoster, possibly over a 40-year period.²³ An Australian study, performed to assess the potential impact of universal varicella vaccination based on this hypothesis, suggested that total morbidity due to varicella and herpes zoster in Australia would decrease for the first 7 years of a population program, but, for 8–51 years after vaccination commenced, total morbidity was predicted to be higher than pre-vaccination levels.²⁴ However, this model assumed 90% vaccination coverage and 93% vaccine effectiveness. These predictions might not be correct, particularly given that overall vaccine coverage and effectiveness are now estimated to be less than that originally used in the model. Currently, surveillance data from the USA, where varicella immunisation has been recommended for over a decade, indicates a large reduction in varicella morbidity with no increase in zoster disease yet demonstrated.²⁵

Chickenpox and shingles are therefore a little complicated.  If they go the way of smallpox, good for us.

Deep under [the] cover[s]

A load of Thunderballs: James Bond is fiction, not a police instruction manual | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian

Well, I haven't paid much attention to this before:  there's a case running in the UK in which a group of women (and one man) are suing the police service for allowing undercover operatives to engage in sexual relationships with them.   As the opinion piece above notes, a judge has referred to what James Bond would be allowed to get up, much to the annoyance of some observers.

This line of work is (or should be, if you were raised right) an ethical minefield for those engaging in it.  At least, you might think, the relationships are over and done with in a relatively short time.

But that is what's really surprising:  some of these relationships gone on for a very long time -

Some may question how much the women involved really suffered: they were with a man long ago who was not what he claimed to be – OK, not nice, but move on. Such an attitude was hinted at in the remarks by a male activist who slept with an undercover policewoman in a tent at a "climate camp" and who told the Guardian he did not want to sue the police because the one-night stand was "nothing meaningful".

But for the others these were not one-night stands, they were relationships of long standing – six years in one case, five in another – that were enormously meaningful. Those involved tell of deep and genuine attachments, the men integrated into their lives as partners, living together, travelling together, attending family gatherings, sitting at a parent's bedside, even attending a funeral.

There are at least four children from these relationships, some of whom have only now, decades later, discovered who their father really was – and that they were born of a great act of deception.

The greatest pain seems to have come afterwards. Uncannily, most of the relationships all seem to have ended the same way: a sudden departure, a postcard from abroad, and then silence. Some women spent months or even years trying to work out what had gone wrong, travelling far in search of answers. Others found that their ability to trust had been shattered. If the man they had loved turned out to be an agent of the state, what else should they be suspicious of? Could they trust their colleagues, their friends? And the question that nags above all others: was it all a fake, did he not love me at all? One woman tells friends simply: "Five years of my life was built on a lie."

There was rightly an outcry about the News of the World's hacking of people's voicemail messages. But this was the hacking of people's lives, burrowing into the most intimate spaces of the heart in order to do a job, all authorised by the police. It is state-sanctioned emotional abuse.

Remarkable.

In defence of thimerosal

Mercury treaty debate: Should thimerosal be banned as a vaccine preservative? - Slate Magazine

A detailed and interesting explanation here as to why the mercury compound thimersol should be allowed to remain in vaccines.

Other forms of problematic mercury are not so harmless, however:

Estimating its global impact is difficult, but in some populations almost 2 percent of children are born with mental retardation caused by mercury poisoning.

This all reminds me:  the 1980 science fiction novel Timescape by Gregory Benford, which I only partially read since I don't care for Benford's inability to write likeable characters, starts with a near future "mercury hunt" in the sewers under some university town.  If I recall correctly, it was an extrapolation that mercury for scientific use was becoming in shorter supply and much more expensive, and hence these scavenging trips through drains and sewers would be viable in the future.  If I am remembering it right, that was one (amongst many) predictions in the book that failed to pass.   [If you want to guarantee a science fiction book with a short shelf life, set it about the near future and make lots of detailed predictions about what will go wrong.]

Your dose of intense nerdiness for today

TheVine - The Right Way to Watch Star Wars 

It's an amusing read for the intensity of Star Wars nerdiness on display.  

As it happens, I was thinking about the silliness of the midichlorians while in the shower last night:  turning an appealing mystical/spiritual force in the first films into something sounding like a virus infection.

And speaking of virus infections - I'm having an interesting one at the moment.  Worth a separate post...

 

Australia heat wave in detail

What's causing Australia's heat wave?

I haven't commented on all the publicity about the nation wide heatwave of a couple of weeks ago, as I was waiting on a bit more explanation of how they work it out from the Bureau of Meteorology.

Well, the article above does give more detail, and is well worth reading.

No matter how much the reality disconnected Right wing of politics complains, it looks clear that it was a very unusual event.  

Update:  how appropriate that I posted this on the morning that Sydney has (unexpectedly)  had its hottest day on record by .5 degree.  (45.8 - which is by any standard remarkably hot.)

Hobart broke its record by a full 1 degree on 4 January.

A normally temperate place like that breaking its record by a full degree is very remarkable, I reckon.