The Dossier(s)?

The Dossier(s)?

The prison bars are slowly closing around Trump. I hope fast enough to prevent a war with North Korea. Following are two recent articles about the infamous dossier, including the salacious portion.  I myself have been closely following the dossier investigation. One nice thing about the dossier is that in the published version someone used a yellow highlighter to emphasize the best parts (Perhaps the use of a yellow highlighter is an “in joke”). Although it is possibly leaning towards a type of  “schadenfreude” (Translation: “the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another”) but I just can’t help it with this numbnut (Translation: The stupidest of the stupid. A complete dumbass, one whose intelligence quotient does not surpass that of the average rock), but I myself have been pushing for more on the salacious portion of the dossier.

And now for two recent articles about the dossier:

 How's THIS for a bombshell? It comes from BBC World News Correspondent Paul Wood (and was published in THE SPECTATOR, a weekly UK magazine):

"Steele is not the only source [on the infamous "pee tape]. I heard of Russian "Kompromat" - compromising material- on Trump from two sources months before the Steele Dossier came to light. That might be evidence for Trump's statement that Russian intelligence, as well as the US agencies, are out to get him. There are, though, reports of witnesses in the hotel who corroborate Steel's reporting. These include an American who's said to have seen a row with hotel security over whether the (alleged) hookers would be allowed up to Trump's suite. The dossier's account of hookers in a Moscow hotel room was the subject of gossip among a select group of  journalists, politicians, and intelligence people for months before it was published. Now claims are circulating of  more tapes showing an even more extreme behavior. Expect these allegations to emerge in due course."

And of course the following BBC-published report from Paul Wood can't possibly be retweeted enough times.....

"Former MI6 agent, Christopher Steele, is not the only source for the claim about Russian Kompromat on the president-elect. Back in August, a retired head of an East European intelligence agency told me he had been informed of its existence by the "head of an East European intelligence Agency." Later I  used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with the case file - they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was "more than one tape", "audio and video", on "more than one date", "in more than one place" - in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St. Petersberg - and that the material [in the Trump tape held by the Kremlin] was "of a sexual nature"."

WOW!

Don’t forget to call your Congressperson and push for impeachment. Treason alone just won’t do it, but an old-fashioned  sex scandal just might. 

Recent Major Non-Trump-related Advances in Science

In spite of the emotion and turmoil of my hearing Trump take the US out of the Paris Climate accord and also the storm of new information daily about Trump and the Russians ( I personally feel that these leaks are payback from Trump  having insulting the entire intelligence community), I want to calm myself and write a little about several recent exciting science discoveries. In spite of  having retired and closed my lab in 2014, I have tried (I admit with some difficulty) to keep up with papers and discussions in Nature and Science. And I also subscribe to a fascinating magazine for the educated layman (and retired molecular biologists) called The New Scientist.

Discovery of gravitational waves.

These are non-electromagnetic waves traveling at the speed of light produced by the deformation of space-time by massive accelerating gravitational objects. Einstein  had predicted these in  1916 in his General Theory of Relativity but it was thought that they were faint to be ever observed. In 1974  however, these waves were indirectly detected  by observing a binary neutron star system over a 2 year period by radio astronomy. Hulse and Taylor found that the period of rotation was decreasing exactly as predicted by Einstein’s theory if gravitational waves were being radiated.

               To actually detect gravitational waves requires an instrument that can measure a movement of 10^-19 meters (a distance of 1/10,000 of a proton)! The best way to measure small distances is still to  use interferometry, as used by Michelson in  1880  to show that the speed of light was constant in any direction and therefore a hypothetical medium in which light moved called the  “ether” did not exist.  This led directly to Einstein’s relativity theories. To detect  gravitational waves required a series of truly incredible engineering advances: production of an extremely powerful and stable 200 watt laser, seismic isolation systems that sense ground movements and make corrections, passive movement damping system involving pendulums supporting the 40 kg mirrors, production of extremely high quality vacuums in the two L-shaped 2.5 mile long tunnels in both the Hanford and Livingston sites, and finally a network of supercomputers to process and archive the terabytes of data produced every day. The project initiated in 1990 and was upgraded in 2010. The first detection of gravitational waves at both sites occurred in 2015, just a few days after the installation of upgraded detectors.

And suddenly there was a new window on the universe not based on electromagnetic waves! To date there have been three separate observations of gravitational waves.

In order to clear my head of  Trump nonsense, I plan to discuss several additional major advances in science in upcoming blogs.  These include:

1.      Entanglement.

2.      Dark matter

3.      Dark energy

4.      The multiverse and the quantum universe.

5.      Growth of brain organoids from stem cells.

6.      The role of micro RNAs in gene regulation

7.      Development of the CRISPR/Cas gene editing system

The Most Dangerous Organization in the World

Noah Chomsky is a famous American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian and social critic. Recently he asked (clearly, rhetorically) ”…has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated with such commitment to the destruction of organized human life on Earth? Not that I’m aware of. Is the Republican organization—I hesitate to call it a party—committed to that? Overwhelmingly. There isn’t even any question about it.” 

As an example, he mentioned the UN-sponsored Conference on implementing the Paris Accord on Climate Change which took place in Morocco last November. As soon as the news came in that Donald Trump has been elected American President, the Conference abruptly terminated its discussion of Climate Change, leading Chomsky to say “Can the world survive when the richest, most powerful country in world history … not only is withdrawing from the effort to try to save the world from destruction, but is undertaking a dedicated commitment to race to the precipice as quickly as possible?”

Chomsky noted that President Trump wants an increase in the use of fossil fuels (including coal), removal of all regulations, termination of aid to developing countries trying to move to green energy and, most serious of all, destruction of the EPA and the Department of Energy by selecting climate deniers as directors and cutting their budgets by more than 30%.

Clearly, the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in the world.

The rat lung worm is a nematode parasite that has snails as an intermediate host and can infect humans as incidental hosts and cause a fatal brain disease

Climate denial by Trump and Scott Pruit, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is not only stupid, but could turn out to be very dangerous for human health.

Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a nematode that lives in the lungs of rats and has snails as intermediate hosts.  It is endemic in humans and can cause an often fatal brain disease that is untreatable. The rat disease was discovered in 1935 and is found world-wide, and the first human case of the disease was recorded in Taiwan in 1944.  Recently, human cases have been identified in Hawaii, California, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, and along the Gulf Coast. “It is a worm infection introduced into North America through globalization,” said Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Transmission to humans occurs when people eat the intermediate hosts, which may even not be detectable on a leaf of lettuce that wasn’t washed. Even the slime left by an infected slug could transmit the disease and eating raw freshwater prawns, crabs, and frogs is also dangerous. In Maui there were six cases in a three month period.  The infected rats defecate worm larvae that are then eaten by snails, slugs and shrimp.  Humans are infected by eating contaminated food or even directly from handling infected snails. The parasites migrate to the brain meninges and can even penetrate into the brain. The disease is very difficult to diagnose.  Even though humans are not a true host, the presence of the worms causes a meningitis with severe headache, tremors, pain and inflammation caused by death of the worms and the host immune response. In fact, treatment with drugs used against other worm parasites can exacerbate the disease by killing the parasites and increasing inflammation.  

The rapid increase in the range of these parasites is almost certainly caused by climate change and globalization. There is an excellent recent paper entitled Geographic Range Expansion for Rat Lungworm in North America in Emerging Infectious Diseases (Volume 21, Number 7—July 2015) by Emily M. York, James P. Creecy, Wayne D. Lord, and William Caire.

Unfortunately, we are in the era of the fake-President Donald Trump, a climate denier, who is proposing a 30% decrease in the EPA budget. In fact, EPA workers are not allowed to even mention the term “climate change”. That reminds me of the king who once demanded that the ocean waves stop. I just hope that the FBI finishes its investigation and Trump and his crowd are indicted for treason and prosecuted. It should prove difficult for Trump to do more damage to our country when he is in jail.

But also unfortunately, this will certainly prove to be one of the least problems caused by climate change, and will pale in relation to the financial and ecological disasters caused by the rise in ocean level which will submerge major coastal cities worldwide, the expected mass migrations of people affected by the losses of water and food, and by the possibly nuclear wars caused by these migrations. In fact I doubt that our civilization will survive this tremendous damage to its infrastructure. 

Ah well, I have no children to suffer, but I am sure that the politicians such as Trump and the Republicans have children and grandchildren who will wonder why their ancestors let this happen to our world!

Republican talking Points and Fake News

There is a Fake News Republican talking point that Obamacare is in a “death spiral”. Unfortunately for their talking point, Obamacare is doing quite well, thank you.  Another talking point especially by the Lier in Chief, Donald Trump, was the repeated calling of Hilary especially in the debates, “crooked Hilary”. If  fake news is repeated enough times, it becomes a fact , whereas it is merely a “walking zombie”.  Reince Priebus said that Obama’s health care reform law is “imploding and exploding”. Speaker Paul Ryan  said many times that the ACA is in a “death spiral” and that “the law is collapsing”. Trump said that the ACA is “just about ready to implode” and “Obamacare is dead.”. He also said the immoral hope that after the failure of the new Republican Health Care law, Obamacare will collapse and he will pick up the pieces.

The CBO recently found that the health insurance “market would probably be stable in most areas.  And the New York Times pointed out that the healthcare market under Obamacare would probably be stable.  The death spiral lie was started when Aetna pulled out of 11 states and the CEO blamed this on a “death spiral”. This was actually done because Aetna was not allowed to merge with Humana and to avoid antitrust scrutiny. Another argument against a death spiral is that fewer young adults, who usually are more healthy, would buy policies through the exchanges, but in fact 85% of  the new policy members are protected from premium increases by subsidies. In 2017, 121.2 million people were signed up on Obamacare. There probably would have been more except that Trump stopped funding government adds reminding people of the deadlines for enrollment. The number will increase since four states people who started the enrollment before Jan. 31 to be enrolled. And Louisiana recently expanded Medicaid.  Experts agree that Obamacare would probably stabilize in the next few years. However, there are a few states where the markets are near collapse, but in Wisconsin, Idaho, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Arkansas and California, the markets have multiple insurance companies. New York has 17 insurance carriers and total enrollments increased 28% for 2017. Also fake news is that doctors are leaving due to Obamacare. But the total number of active physicians has increased 8% from 2010 and medical school applicants and students are at an all-time high. Finally the Medicaid expansion covers around 11 million people and has driven down the uninsured rate by around 7%.

There are definitely some problems in Obamacare, but most are due to Republican governors refusing to expand Medicare.  And a recent Trump executive order instructed agencies to relax Healthcare rules, and the IRS complied by refusing to enforce the individual mandate.

In 1897, the American writer, Mark Twain, said that “the report of my death was an exaggeration”. If the Republicans want Obamacare to die, they will have to do it themselves, which they are quite willing and capable of doing.  The only saving feature is that current users of Obamacare and Medicaid (Democrats and Republicans) have been filling the town hall meetings of their Congressmen and shouting down any signs of wanting to destroy Obamacare. This is something that Trump and friends can think about in their jail cells. The fact is that only the thing that is in a “death spiral” is the Republican Party. 

Too Good to be True?

A paper came out in Nature recently with the mind-numbing  title: “The antibody aducanumab reduces Ab plaques in Alzheimer’s disease.” But in perusal of the Abstract a statement jumped out to me: “In a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) aducanumab is shown to enter the brain, bind parenchymal Ab, and reduce soluble and insoluble Ab in a dose-dependent manner. In patients with prodromal or mild Ab, one year of monthly intravenous infusions of aducanumab reduces brain Ab in a dose-and time-dependent manner. This is accompanied by a slowing of clinical decline measured by Clinical Dementia Ratings-Sum of Boxes and Mini Mental State Examination scores.” They concluded that “..these results justify further development of aducanumab for the  treatment of AD.”

Now, I am not in the AD-amyloid field, but this appears very exciting. I know very well that there has been a great controversy whether amyloid-plaques and tangles have anything directly to do with the clinical development of AD, but these data show that this antibody reduces brain Ab plaques. It also provides preliminary evidence for an effect on the clinical development of AZ.

But before you run out and tell your mother about this, a larger Phase 3 clinical study with many more patients must be performed, but it already gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. 

Computer viruses

I had written a blog entry recently about the possibility that the Kaspersky Antivirus Company could be involved with the Russian hacking of our election, but I never posted it, just in case it was wrong. The reason I thought that this was a possibility is that I had read that the CEO, Eugene Kaspersky, was a close friend of Putin. In addition, Kaspersky was the first company to forensically uncover the Stuxnet worm and its progeny, Duqu 2.0, that attacked the Iranian nuclear program as well as the entire Kaspersky computer network. This worm was presumably created by the NSA and the Israeli intelligence agencies.

So it was no great surprise that I read today that Ruslan Stoyanov, the Kaspersky Manager in charge of investigating computer hacking, was arrested in Russia and charged with Treason!  However, in view of all the recent publicity about Russian computer hacking, this has the definite smell of disinformation.

More to come, I presume.