Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@qoto.org

"So the foundations of the entire Cassava Alzheimer's program are shaky. And as you'll see from this, that's not the end of it. Thirty-four papers by Cassava-associated scientists have come under scrutiny for research irregularities, and this led to a petition filing to the FDA asking that the company be investigated and their clinical trials halted."

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/saga-cassava

'And then once we’d had a drink, every single host told me that a plane used to fly from Moscow just to fetch Stalin’s wine. What’s more, every other host swore he had documents to prove it, and two of them even showed them to me, though first of all, they were in Georgian, and second, I was too tipsy to understand them or remember anything about them.'

https://lithub.com/dinner-with-a-dictator-what-joseph-stalin-ate/

"Evaluating policies on misconduct is essential, but the idea of a scientific ecosystem that is free of errors is an unattainable utopia. However, evolving a more responsive ecosystem is entirely possible, and scientific journals, institutions, and researchers must together move more intentionally in this direction."

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm8205

"When bats fly, their metabolism can rev up to 15 to 16 times above its resting state; their heart rate may soar above 1,000 beats per minute; their body temperature can exceed 105 degrees Fahrenheit, effectively plunging the animals into an epic fever state. Put all of that on virtually any other mammal, and their body would likely be overwhelmed by the blaze of extreme inflammation, the toxic by-products of their metabolism effectively rending cells apart."

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/11/bat-disease-virus-health-aging/675943/

"The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projects that, by 2050, global average sea levels will likely rise by 7 to 9 inches, or 18 to 23 centimeters. By 2100, they will likely rise by more than a foot or even more than two feet. The behavior of ice shelves is one of the biggest uncertainties currently complicating these estimates."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/climate/greenland-glaciers-ice-melt.html

@nicolaromano They describe briefly US cases, and then it is just a disaster, because of course the money dimension takes over.

@nicolaromano Depends - the UK liver transplantation algo they focus more on in this piece seems to be a good attempt at improving a difficult situation. But as they say here, there is a fundamental problem:

'Because there aren’t enough livers for all 700 people on the UK’s list, “transplantation remains a zero-sum game and any adjustment in allocation is simply a case of causing harm to one to help another,” wrote Raj Prasad, a surgeon at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, in the Lancet this year.'

"The NLOS that spits out the Transplant Benefit Scores is one of dozens of algorithms in use in healthcare systems around the world. These applied statistical systems are used by physicians and hospitals to aid decisions such as who receives heart surgery and organ transplantation, which patients are at the highest risk of surgical complications, and in diagnosing cancers and brain injury. The intent behind predictive algorithms, like the NLOS, is to make consequential decisions fairer."

https://www.ft.com/content/5125c83a-b82b-40c5-8b35-99579e087951

Fruit bowl with bat, glazed stoneware by @hunchbacksociety

#Ceramics #stoneware #pottery #Handmade #Art #artgallery #artmastodon

https://madalenaparreira.com/Hunchbacksociety

"Then, 20-odd years ago, some researchers began to ask a heretical question: is the brain really so isolated? The answer, according to a growing body of evidence, is no — and has important implications for both science and health care."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03435-2