Hey everyone! Proof of life here. My book MS is in (and accepted!*). I just sent off the final (I hope) illustration list to both the design department and the picture researcher. So maybe…just possibly…I might be able to do the odd post here.
I got lots of thoughts about our political adventures, most notably that while I’m having as much fun with furniture fetishist Vance, this remains an existential fight, as Trump says the quiet part out loud: if he wins, this is our last election. But there are better front-pagers (and commenters) on this beat, so I thought I’d try to get some less immediately obvious takes on these times we’re living in.
And why not attempt to restart some bloggery with some decent news. Biomedicine has been spinning off some amazing results lately. Here are two that will do so much to relieve human suffering…
First: fascinating new insights on lupus:
A new study about the underlying mechanisms of lupus presents a novel way to potentially treat the autoimmune disease…
The study’s findings raise a “compelling idea” for a novel way to treat lupus, said Deepak Rao, a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and one of the senior authors of the study.
The linked WaPo article is a good explainer. The TL:DR is that the research team–a collaboration between scientists at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Northwestern University–identified a specific mechanism within certain T cells that could produce the disregulation of the immune system that creates the damage associated with lupus. The work is VERY preliminary, but if the causal account holds up, the details of that mechanism suggest a way to address the disease at the cellular level.
Which is to say: clinical benefits, if any, are a long way off. But lupus is a wretched disease, and creating a detailed molecular account of the disease process is a crucial foundational step towards being able to treat and hopefully reverse its effects.
Second: this is just cool…
NASA’s Perseverance rover has found a very intriguing rock on the surface of Mars.
An arrowhead-shaped rock observed by the rover has chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. To be absolutely clear, this is not irrefutable evidence of past life on Mars, when the red planet was more amenable to water-based life billions of years ago. But discovering these colored spots on this rock is darn intriguing and has Mars scientists bubbling with excitement.
As the reporter, Eric Berger emphasizes, this isn’t a discovery–yet. Dots on a rock do not in themselves admit the conclusion that microbes once lived on Mars.
They could be–but the limit of what can be gleaned at this distance is, as Berger writes, “The distinctive colorful spots, containing both iron and phosphate, are a smoking gun for certain chemical reactions—rather than microbial life itself.”
To go further, chunks of Mars have to make it back to earth. Sample return is a hugely challenging mission. I hope it happens in my lifetime. But whether or not it does, this is still at once a delightful possibility and, in some sense, a work of art. Perseverance serves no practical purpose. It was made and it performs because enough of us find the attempt to understand nature beautiful in the same fashion that any other gift to our senses and our minds can satisfy.
And here, alas, is where politics reenters the conversation–at least for me. Science is valuable because it contributes to human flourishing. Often in the most obvious, material ways: coming up with a cure for lupus would be a big deal, changing and saving lives. And it can be fun, provide joy, prompt deeper thinking and feeling, as Perservance’s off-roading demonstrates. Neither happens unless as a society we are willing to spend a ton of money on curiosity (the human impulse, not that other Mars hot rod). Supporting science in DC has historically been a pretty reliably bipartisan affair–but that’s increasingly no longer true.
The range of threats a Trumpist GOP poses to the science and the research capacity of the US is beyond the reach of this late night post; I know the commentariat has all the expertise needed to fill in that story.
For now, let me not harsh the mellow too much. Hairless bipeds remain capable of doing great things. We can enjoy them.
G’night all. This thread is as open as will be the first 7-Eleven on Deimos.
Image: Hendrik ter Brugghen, Mars Asleep, 1629
