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Sun, 01 Dec 2024 17:25:21 GMT

Over Thanksgiving Robert Reich, in his substack, reminded us of some good outcomes that happened even in Red States. The following is quoted directly from him. Check him out on bluesky or substack..

"Citizens in Arizona, Missouri, Montana, and Nevada voted to protect reproductive rights by putting such rights directly into their state constitutions. (Floridians voted 57 to 43 to protect them, but the measure was just short of the 60 percent threshold needed to pass.) (quoted from Robert Reich substack)

Voters in Alaska and Missouri decided to increase their state minimum wages to $15 an hour; they and Nebraska also passed measures to require employers to provide paid sick leave. (quoted from Robert Reich substack)

Voters in Kentucky wisely rejected a measure that would have allowed the state to fund K-12 students outside the public schools. And Democrats defended their liberal majorities in the Minnesota and Montana legislatures. (Robert Reich substack)

Democrats also expanded their majority on the Michigan Supreme Court to 5-2, flipped a state Supreme Court seat in Kentucky, and in Mississippi won a Supreme Court seat in an upset victory for a public defender. (Democrats are also narrowly leading North Carolina’s Supreme Court race as of this writing, with the race going to a recount.)

How did Democrats manage all this in “red” states? They organized and mobilized and they planned for the long term. (Robert Reich substack)

Wisconsin offers a good illustration. There, Democrats picked up four seats and broke the GOP supermajority in the state Senate, picked up 10 seats in the state Assembly, and are on track to flip both chambers in 2026 and potentially get a trifecta if they win the governor’s race that year too.

This was possible because Democrats flipped Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court in 2023, and that court struck down the gerrymandered GOP-drawn state legislative map. Democratic Governor Tony Evers signed into law a new competitive state legislative map." ( Reich substack)

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 17:25:11 GMT

Over Thanksgiving Robert Reich, in his substack, reminded us of some good outcomes that happened even in Red States. The following is quoted directly from him. Check him out on bluesky or substack..

How did Democrats manage all this in “red” states? They organized and mobilized and they planned for the long term. (Robert Reich substack)

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 18:24:02 GMT

AOC on bathroom sharing. "“Women know that men don’t scheme to ‘dress like girls’ to assault them,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X. “They do it every day in broad daylight. And the ones in power protect each other to keep it quiet. Just ask the House Ethics Committee. Or the President-elect of the United States.”

Where will it stop? Will they demand a strip search if a person wearing a feminine business suit with pants wants to use the women's bathroom? What about a person wearing a man's tux? Demand a penis search?

I suggest all the dems cross dress and then go to the bathroom that correlates with their gender identity.

We can call it a PEE-IN!

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 22:17:19 GMT

This is paywalled. But the bottom line is: very little data. We are talking about a tiny cohort. When we are talking about prepubertal children, the idea of an advantage is just stupid.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/11/20/metro/transgender-athletes-seth-moulton/?s\_campaign=8315

Talking about regular school sports (post puberty), lowered T levels from gender-affirming treatment will eliminate supposed advantages.

Talking about truly elite sports--so many factors are involved. There is no strong evidence that trans athletes on gender-affirming hormone treatments for two years (the current rule) have an unfair advantage.

A lot of people don't know the basic information but have a hard time understanding gender-non conformity. They are susceptible to the likes of Nancy Mace. Mace does not care about the truth. She is just ginning up hysteria for her own political gain.

#transrights #LGBTQSTEM

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 22:17:13 GMT

This is paywalled. But the bottom line is: very little data. We are talking about a tiny cohort. When we are talking about prepubertal children, the idea of an advantage is just stupid.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/11/20/metro/transgender-athletes-seth-moulton/?s\_campaign=8315

Talking about regular school sports (post puberty), lowered T levels from gender-affirming treatment will eliminate supposed advantages.

#transrights #LGBTQSTEM

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:37:47 GMT

Time to brush up on fluoridation. In my youth it was opposed as a Communist plot. Now it seems RFK has his own reasons. Anyway, this post on substack by Kaitlin Jetelina is a great place to start. https://substack.com/home/post/p-151748993 Here are some snippets.

"The value of fluoride isn’t controversial—it’s good for our teeth. This is why toothpaste contains fluoride, and dentists apply it directly to teeth, too. The question being debated is whether we should add it to our public water supplies."

"In 2011, Calgary’s city council banned fluoridation. In five years, cavities among elementary school children increased almost twofold, and IV antibiotics (to mitigate harm from bacteria) increased eightfold. They ended up putting fluoride back in in 2021."

"Because the public water system reaches everyone equally, fluoridation mitigates the impact of disparities in access to dental care in the United States. This is one of the beauties of public health—a mainly invisible population intervention, helping the most vulnerable.

"Lower-income families still struggle to find dentists who take their insurance. In 2023, the American Dental Society found that only one in three dentists nationally accept Medicaid. This helps explain the CDC report that children in lower-income families have nearly three times higher rates of untreated cavities than children in higher-income families."

"Most Western European countries have ended public water fluoridation. There are a few reasons why:

Other countries have free dental care for kids.

They get fluoride from other sources, like fluorinated salt, especially in communities without centralized water systems."

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:43:30 GMT

Tonight I am meditating on how embryos develop. Think about it. At fertilization there is one cell. As that cell divides and the next two become four, etc. until there are millions of cells, for the most part all the cells have the same DNA. Yet pretty quickly the cells specialize. Same genes, different shapes, different physiological functions and a complicated organism where once there was just a plain old cell. How does happen? Well, its all about which genes, represented in identical DNA sequences, became active and which remain silent. It happens because as cells divide, they create new microenvironments, and the new microenvironments change gene expression. So, consider the 6-legged mouse! How did that happen? Here’s a hint: it has six legs but no genitalia.

Legs and the genitalia develop from a single primordial tissue. And there is a regulatory gene that can direct other genes: “don’t do limbs, do genitalia”, which is what usually happens to produce a mouse with four legs and genitalia. But if scientists inactivate that gene then the order to “do genitalia” is cancelled, and a 3rd pair of limbs develop. Voila! The 6 legged mouse. Think about that while you’re waiting for the election results.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00943-7#:~:text=This%20six%2Dlegged%20animal%20isn,can%20affect%20how%20embryos%20develop.

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:41:53 GMT

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00943-7#:~:text=This%20six%2Dlegged%20animal%20isn,can%20affect%20how%20embryos%20develop.

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 22:12:53 GMT

We have entered a new era in freedom of thought at many universities. Which is to say, there is less than before. It reminds me of universities during the 1950s when faculty lost their jobs for refusing to sign a loyalty oath.

Two dozen Harvard faculty suspended from library after pro-Palestinian protest

Two dozen Harvard faculty members have been suspended from the main library on campus, a week after they staged a demonstration criticizing the college’s decision to ban over 12 pro-Palestinian students from the Widener library for holding a nonviolent protest, The Harvard Crimson reported. (from the boston globe)

And here is more from Inside Higher Education "arvard University administrators temporarily barred multiple faculty members from the university’s main library after more than two dozen held a silent “study-in” to protest treatment of student demonstrators who were temporarily suspended from the library for a similar demonstration.

Last month an estimated 30 pro-Palestinian student supporters held a silent study-in at the Widener Library after distributing keffiyehs and posters with slogans such as “Israel Bombs Harvard Pays” outside the building, according to The Harvard Crimson. Inside the library, they read quietly, with signs bearing similar statements taped to their laptops. More than a dozen students were suspended from accessing the library for two weeks as a result of the demonstration.

On Thursday, faculty received the same treatment."

One response is to organize mass, non-violent and silent free speech actions in university libraries.

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 02:00:34 GMT

Krause corpuscles are genital vibrotactile sensors for sexual behaviours

Krause corpuscles, discovered in the 1850s, are specialized sensory structures found within the genitalia. Here we report the anatomical and physiological properties of Krause corpuscles of the mouse clitoris and penis and their roles in sexual behaviour. Krause corpuscles of the clitoris and penis are highly sensitive mechanical vibration detectors that mediate sexually dimorphic mating behaviours.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07528-4

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 02:00:34 GMT

Krause corpuscles are genital vibrotactile sensors for sexual behaviours

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07528-4

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 02:00:33 GMT

Krause corpuscles are genital vibrotactile sensors for sexual behaviours

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07528-4

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 02:00:32 GMT

Krause corpuscles are genital vibrotactile sensors for sexual behaviours

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07528-4

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 01:29:08 GMT

Transgender health research needed

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads3727

" physicians, researchers, and major medical organizations worldwide have emphasized that scientific studies point to the benefits of medical interventions supporting gender affirmation."

"Gender-affirming care consists of personalized health interventions that help patients achieve their goals of decreasing gender dysphoria and increasing gender euphoria. Hormone therapy, surgeries, and mental health services help TGD people live in alignment with their gender identity and expression, consistent with the accepted biomedical ethics principle of respect for autonomy, articulated by philosophers Tom Beauchamp and James Childress in 1979."

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 01:29:00 GMT

Transgender health research needed

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads3727

" physicians, researchers, and major medical organizations worldwide have emphasized that scientific studies point to the benefits of medical interventions supporting gender affirmation."

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 21:57:38 GMT

PUTTING THE MOUSE BRAIN ON THE MAP A pioneering ‘connectomics’ collaboration is the latest effort to unravel the brain’s myriad functions, bringing neuroscientists into challenging new territory. By Michael Eisenstein

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-024-01096-3/d41586-024-01096-3.pdf

This is an amazing story of a complex collaboration to completely map a tiny volume--a cubic mm s "densely packed with tens of thousands of neurons and other cells in a staggeringly complex architectural weave."

"For Lichtman, the connectome’s value will ultimately transcend conventional hypothesis-driven science. A connectome “forces you to see things you weren’t looking for, and yet they’re staring you in the face”, he says. “I think if we do a whole mouse brain, there will be just an infinite number of ‘wow, really?’ discoveries.” "“The more we know, the harder it is to turn this into a simple, easy- to-understand model.”

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 21:56:14 GMT

https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-024-01096-3/d41586-024-01096-3.pdf

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 01:03:42 GMT

I already covered this story, but the summary in Nature offers a clearer summary of what it might mean. The source is Nature NEWS 04 September 2024

Gender-affirming therapy reshapes the immune systems of trans men by Saima Sidik Testosterone treatment boosts levels of an inflammatory protein to those typically seen in cis men, study finds.

When trans men receive testosterone therapy, their bodies begin to resemble those of cis men in many ways — including their immune systems. That’s according to a study published today in Nature1, one of the largest yet to examine how gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) affects the immune system over time The results provide much-needed insight and could help to explain why men tend to be more susceptible to viral infections than are women and women are often more susceptible to autoimmune conditions.The study is important because physicians want GAHT “to be safe, of course”, says co-author Mats Holmberg, an endocrinologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who provides gender-affirming care. It is a step towards being able to administer the best treatment possible, Holmberg says.

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 01:03:28 GMT

I already covered this story, but the summary in Nature offers a clearer summary of what it might mean. The source is Nature NEWS 04 September 2024

Gender-affirming therapy reshapes the immune systems of trans men by Saima Sidik Testosterone treatment boosts levels of an inflammatory protein to those typically seen in cis men, study finds.

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 01:43:57 GMT

Hormones reconfigure the immune cells of transmen (see https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02432-3?utm\_medium=Social&utm\_source=Twitter#Echobox=1725541678-1).

The idea that the immune system is influenced by sex hit the headlines because of the markedly higher rates of COVID-19 deaths in men than in women1, fuelling researchers’ desire to understand the origin and consequences of sex differences in immune cells. Writing in Nature, Lakshmikanth et al.2 shed light on the contribution of hormones to such differences in the immune system. The authors report that administration of a molecule that is an analogue of testosterone during gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) in trans men rapidly results in persistent alteration of the immune response, towards the responses typically observed in cis men and away from those typical of cis women.

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 22:51:36 GMT

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 01:52:00 GMT

https://www/nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01387-9

There are spectacular images. Researchers found neurons, that made up to 50 connections with each other. “In general, you would find a couple of connections at most between two neurons,” Elsewhere, the model showed neurons with tendrils that formed knots around themselves. “Nobody had seen anything like this before,” Jain adds.

The team also found pairs of neurons that were near-perfect mirror images of each other. “We found two groups that would send their dendrites in two different directions, and sometimes there was a kind of mirror symmetry,” Jain says. It is unclear what role these features have in the brain."

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 01:49:09 GMT

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01387-9

There are spectacular images.Researchers found neurons, that made up to 50 connections with each other. “In general, you would find a couple of connections at most between two neurons,” Elsewhere, the model showed neurons with tendrils that formed knots around themselves. “Nobody had seen anything like this before,” Jain adds.

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 01:49:09 GMT

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01387-9

There are spectacular images.Researchers found neurons, that made up to 50 connections with each other. “In general, you would find a couple of connections at most between two neurons,” Elsewhere, the model showed neurons with tendrils that formed knots around themselves. “Nobody had seen anything like this before,” Jain adds.

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 21:44:50 GMT

AFS writes: Great strides using wearable sensors are being applied to how infants learn words and generalize them to new concepts and situations. This general approach and the emerging theories of how infants learn to generalize about the world need to be applied to how infants learn about gender and further, how “children are fundamentally active, embodied learners” and “learn continually from an ongoing stream of experience”. This is not your mother’s socialization theory. Developmentalists interested in how gender becomes embodied and assimilated into subjective identity need to get into this!

Grounded language acquisition through the eyes and ears of a single child

Editor’s summary

How do young children learn to associate new words with specific objects or visually represented concepts? This hotly debated question in early language acquisition has been traditionally examined in laboratories, limiting generalizability to real-world settings. Vong et al. investigated the question in an unprecedented, longitudinal manner using head-mounted video recordings from a single child’s first-person experiences in naturalistic settings. By applying machine learning, they introduced the Child’s View for Contrastive Learning (CVCL) model, pairing video frames that co-occurred with uttered words, and embedded the images and words in shared representational spaces. CVCL represents sets of visually similar things from one concept (e.g., puzzles) through distinct subclusters (animal versus alphabet puzzles). It combines associative and representation learning that fills gaps in language acquisition research and theories. —Ekeoma Uzogara

Abstract

Starting around 6 to 9 months of age, children begin acquiring their first words, linking spoken words to their visual counterparts. How much of this knowledge is learnable from sensory input with relatively generic learning mechanisms, and how much requires stronger inductive biases? Using longitudinal head-mounted camera recordings from one child aged 6 to 25 months, we trained a relatively generic neural network on 61 hours of correlated visual-linguistic data streams, learning feature-based representations and cross-modal associations. Our model acquires many word-referent mappings present in the child’s everyday experience, enables zero-shot generalization to new visual referents, and aligns its visual and linguistic conceptual systems. These results show how critical aspects of grounded word meaning are learnable through joint representation and associative learning from one child’s input.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi1374

#devpsych #cogpsy #philpsy #feministsky

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 21:44:40 GMT

Grounded language acquisition through the eyes and ears of a single child

Editor’s summary

Abstract

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi1374

#devpsych #cogpsy #philpsy #feministsky

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 21:39:01 GMT

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 21:39:00 GMT

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 14:23:04 GMT

NOISE POLLUTION Pre- and postnatal noise directly impairs avian development, with fitness consequences Alizée Meillère1,2*, Katherine L. Buchanan1, Justin R. Eastwood1,3, Mylene M. Mariette1,2* Noise pollution is expanding at an unprecedented rate and is increasingly associated with impaired reproduction and development across taxa. However, whether noise sound waves are intrinsically harmful for developing young—or merely disturb parents—and the fitness consequences of early exposure remain unknown. Here, by only manipulating the offspring, we show that sole exposure to noise in early life in zebra finches has fitness consequences and causes embryonic death during exposure. Exposure to pre- and postnatal traffic noise cumulatively impaired nestling growth and physiology and aggravated telomere shortening across life stages until adulthood. Consistent with a long-term somatic impact, early life noise exposure, especially prenatally, decreased individual offspring production throughout adulthood. Our findings suggest that the effects of noise pollution are more pervasive than previously realized.

#birdsky

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade5868

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 14:16:04 GMT