One of the challenges of being a science communicator is keeping up to date. About 2.5 million scientific papers are published every year. Most of this is noise, preliminary studies, speculations, etc., but the end result is that most fields of science are constantly changing. This became very concrete for me while writing my next book (shameless plug alert), The Skeptics Guide to the Future, coming out this Fall. A big part of the book is examining cutting edge science and technology and then extrapolating it into the near, midterm, and far future. During the editing process there were constantly science news items that required small updates to the book. In fact I had to ask my editor, after the final submission, if I could please squeeze in one more update, and promised it would be the last one.

If you are not paying obsessive attention to a particular field of science, it’s really difficult to keep completely up to date. There is also a substantial delay, sometimes decades, between changes to the consensus of scientific opinion based on new evidence and when that new consensus filters down to the public’s general consciousness. Sometime the delay is forever, as outdated ideas persist indefinitely. This is especially true if an outdated scientific conclusion has a rhetorical utility, either in marketing a product or promoting a political ideology. We figured out a quarter of a century ago that consuming anti-oxidants were not good for your health, but don’t hold your breath for the supplement industry to alter their promotion of anti-oxidant products.

One idea that has become a standard part of the conversation on climate change is that once CO2 is released into the atmosphere it will cause continued warming for decades. So, the argument goes, even if we stopped all release of greenhouse gases today, full net-zero, the climate would continue to warm for many decades, perhaps a century or longer. That was the scientific consensus, although it was never a very firm one, just the best estimate based on existing evidence. That conclusion, however, started to crack as early as 2008, and by 2020 was updated with new and better science. This is a rare instance of good climate news. In an interview, climate scientist Michael Mann said:

“This really is true,” he said. “It’s a dramatic change in the paradigm that has been lost on many who cover this issue, perhaps because it hasn’t been well explained by the scientific community. It’s an important development that is still under appreciated. It’s definitely the scientific consensus now that warming stabilizes quickly, within 10 years, of emissions going to zero.”

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Think of the number 23. What just happened in your brain? You have some sense of how large a number 23 is. You are reading, so probably the first representation was the written form, and then you may have said “twenty-three” to yourself. You probably didn’t imagine exactly 23 objects laid out, but could have gotten there if you thought long enough. Perhaps you chunked it in your mind – imagining two rows of 10 followed by a row of three. You may have also thought of three weeks plus an extra weekend, or perhaps, staying on the verbal side, phrases like “23 skidoo”.

Our brains do not always work through complete abstraction or direct representation. As the primate brain evolved more and more complexity and ability, it acquired new functions partly through workarounds. For example, there is the phenomenon of “embodied cognition.” Mentally we start with concrete physical concepts and then use them to get to more abstract concepts. The notion, for example, that your boss is “above” you in the hierarchy derives from the more concrete concept of literally being physically above someone else. A “big” idea is not physically big, but it is metaphorically big. An argument may be weak or strong, and someone may be bright or dim. We hold onto physical concepts in order to anchor more abstract concepts.

Neuroscientists have also been studying how our brains handle numbers, comparing human numerical ability to other animals. One key finding is that our brains handle very small numbers differently than larger numbers. Many animals, including humans, have direct hard-wired representation of small numbers in their brains. For humans that number is about 6. We can easily extrapolate this hard-wired representation of numbers to about a dozen. Beyond that our brains need abstract concepts and language in order to reason about numbers, because larger amounts are not directly represented in our brains. Our brains seem to count as – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, more than 6. We have a sense of relative amounts, that one number of objects is larger than another, but not exact amounts.

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“Nanotechnology” is one of the buzzwords of our time. It is used the exact same way “space age technology” was used in the last few decades of the 20th century, and to a lesser extent even to today. It creates a marketing halo of advanced cutting-edge technology, but it’s not clear what it actually means. The term has loosely been used to refer to any tech that involves any component that has one dimension which is between 1-100 nanometers (nm). If only one dimension is in this size range then we are dealing with a nanosheet, and if one of the remaining two dimensions is a lot longer than the other this is a nanoribbon. If two dimensions are in the nano range then that is a nanofiber (long) or nanorod (short), and if it’s hollow then a nanotube. If all three dimensions are between 1-100 nm then that is a nanoparticle.  The nanoparticles themselves could be anything. Since many natural substances have features in this size range, it’s easy to invoke the “nanotechnology” buzzword. For this reason synthetic machines that operate on the nanoscale have been dubbed “molecular nanotechnology” to distinguish this from the now overused regular nanotechnology label.

That said, the ability to determine and control features of objects at the nanoscale is incredibly useful, and in many areas of material science is taking our technology to the next level. We are not yet at the point where we can create sophisticated nanomachines to do our bidding at the nanoscale, but that is the long-term goal. In the meantime we are finding lots of uses for nanoparticles, specifically in medicine. It has been argued that biology is nanotechnology, and if we want to interact with biological systems at their most fundamental scale then we need to get down to the nanoscale. One potential application of nanoparticle medicine is to reduce internal bleeding.

Trauma is the number one cause of death in people 45 years of age and younger. Internal bleeding is a major contributor to trauma-related death, because it may be difficult to identify prior to getting to a hospital, and it may be difficult or even impossible to stop the bleeding by applying pressure. In fact there are technical terms for such bleeds, such as noncompressible torso hemorrhage (NCTH). But what if we can help stop the bleeding from the inside?

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Rapidly advancing computer technology has greatly enhanced our lives and had ripple effects throughout many industries. I essentially lived through the computer and internet revolution, and in fact each stage of my life is marked by the state of computer technology at that time. You can also easily date movies in a contemporary setting by the computer and cell phone technology in use. But one downside to rapid advance is so-called orphaned technology. You may, for example use a piece of software that you know really well and feel is the perfect compromise of usability and functionality. Upgrades may be too expensive for you, or simply not desired. But at some point the company stops supporting the software, because they have moved on to later versions and would rather just have their customers upgrade. Without upgrades the software slowly becomes unusable – vulnerable to hacks and not compatible with other software and hardware.

The problem is greater with hardware. Without driver updates and in some cases the ability to have hardware services, at some point it will stop working. Sure, you can just replace those Jazz drives with CD burners, but what about your library of backups? These problems can at least be solved with money, which can be an obstacle for many people. But what if the hardware is implanted in you? If the technology gets orphaned, there may be no other options. This can become a problem not solved with money or biting the bullet and upgrading.

That is the issue now being faced by more than 350 people around the world who had received the Second Sight bionic eye implant. The company almost went bankrupt in 2019 but was saved by a public offering which raised $57.5 million. However, since then their stock prices have plumetted and now the company is merging with a biopharmaceutical company called Nano Precision Medical, who plans to close the Second Sight division. The technology is effectively orphaned. No more repairs or software updates.

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Most people I know, whether personally or as my patients, want to take positive steps to improve their health and quality of life. Unfortunately, many people who make a decision to get healthier rely on information in the popular culture and being promoted by the self-help industry. Much of this information is wrong or misleading. When people want to improve their diet, they often tell me they only eat organic whole foods, or perhaps they go paleo or raw if they are really motivated. But these changes are worthless – just expensive distractions.

Older patients concerned about their memory and cognitive function tend to focus on two things, diet and “brain games”. As I have discussed before, brain games basically don’t work. If you play Wordle, you get better at Wordle. That’s it. Diet is a little more complicated, as some people, especially older adults, may be deficient in certain nutrients, particularly B12. Even here people get distracted by the notion of “super foods” or some magical supplement. The reality is, for most people, just have a good well-rounded diet and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Vitamin B12, however, largely comes from meat. It is also a difficult vitamin to absorb (it requires a cofactor) and some people have impaired absorption or it wanes as they get older. The solution here is to get regular checkups with your PMD, who will check your B12 level and supplement if necessary. You may even need a B12 shot if your GI absorption is really impaired.

But we haven’t even discussed the factors that have perhaps the greatest effect on the cognitive function of healthy adults. I emphasize healthy, because if someone has a disease that affects their brain function that is a separate issue. Perhaps the most significant single factor affecting memory is healthy adults is sleep. Often sleep gets difficult as we get older for various reasons. People become accustomed to chronically poor sleep, and underestimate its affect on their cognitive function and memory. So step one should always be – fix your sleep. You may be able to do this with improved sleep hygiene, but if this doesn’t fix the problem again you need to see your doctor. You may have a sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea (difficulty breathing when asleep), and this will wreak havoc on your memory. Some people also struggle with anxiety and depression, and this can impair memory and focus. So address those issues as well.

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The “coming hydrogen economy” never came, and may never come, because of the critical problem of hydrogen storage. Hydrogen can be a great fuel because it is light and burns clean with oxygen, creating only water as a byproduct. But these features of hydrogen, while appealing, are not enough. The angle that popular reporting on such scientific advances rarely take is that, in order to be useful, hydrogen fuel (or any similar technology) must work as an entire system. We therefore have to imagine the entire industrial cycle of a hydrogen economy – where will the hydrogen come from, how will it be stored, how will it be distributed, how will it be burned, what are all the byproducts of this entire system, and what other materials are required to make it work? Every piece of the system must be scalable, safe, cost competitive, efficient, and convenient. Further, and significant new infrastructure requirements will present a hurdle to adoption.  The potential number of deal-killer “gotchas” are enormous.

What often happens, however, is that articles report on a scientific advance in one aspect of the entire cycle and couples that with the implication that now the hydrogen economy is really almost here, we just need to work out a couple of details. They rarely mention how the whole system will work, or the fact that those remaining “details” are, in face, deal-killers. They also rarely put it into context of other competing technologies. In the case of hydrogen fuel for cars that competition is battery electric vehicles, which are clearly winning the race to replace internal combustion engines.

With all that in mind, I read the following article: “Department of Energy’s “Fairly Simple” Breakthrough Makes Accessing Stored Hydrogen More Efficient.” The entire article was framed as a breakthrough leading us down the road to hydrogen fuel cars. There are many quotes like:

“This research will positively impact the target of reducing carbon dioxide emission,” Huang said, “and we will need to develop more efficient catalytic systems.”

So now let’s put this into context. The discovery is definitely a good one that may have industrial applications, I just don’t think it will impact the auto industry. The researchers developed a catalyst (a compound that makes a chemical reaction go faster) that can liberate hydrogen from a liquid organic hydrogen compound (LOHC) where it is being stored. LOHCs are carbon-based compounds that have lots of receptor sites for hydrogen. So they have a dehydrogenated state (with lots of double bonds between the carbon atoms), and a hydrogenated state, where hydrogen atoms bind to all those carbon atoms. Toluene is one such compound that is often used as an LOHC.

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Astronomers may have discovered a planet around a white dwarf, and more importantly the planet (if it is real) exists in the habitable zone of the system. This is not the first planet found around a white dwarf – the first was a Jupiter-sized planet found around a white dwarf 6,500 light years away. The find is being touted as indicating the possibility of life, because the planet is in the so-called Goldilocks zone, but that is actually not plausible for several reasons.

White dwarfs are the remnant cores of smaller suns, like the size of our own. When stars die they blow off their outer layers, leaving a hot core behind. If they are large enough that core collapses into a neutron star. And for the largest stars the core will collapse into a black hole. But for sun-sized stars the core remains a hot ember, about the size of a planet like Earth but with 60% or so of its original mass, so extremely dense. White dwarfs will burn hot for billions of years – so why is it improbable that any such planets close to a white dwarf will harbor life?

First, in the process of dying stars will first expand. Our own sun will expand, becoming a red giant, with the surface extending beyond the current orbit of Mars. Any planets in the inner solar system, therefore, will be consumed. Planets just outside this range will likely have any atmospheres stripped away. It is therefore very likely that any life in such a system would be destroyed in the process. It’s possible that a distant Jovian planet with an icy moon harboring life in a deep ocean may survive, but no planet with life living on the surface.

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There is a lot of media buzz about the “fusion breakthrough” at the JET (Joint European Torus) experimental fusion reactor in Culham near Oxford, UK. Many people e-mailed me links to news reporting about it because they know I am a fusion enthusiast. But I am also a fusion realist. As I often have to point out, the current advance is nice but not really a breakthrough, and needs to be put into perspective. The risk is creating a premature sense in the public that the technology is imminent. Meanwhile I think we are likely still at  least a half-century away from having a working fusion reactor generating electricity for the grid.

Recent advances, however, cannot be denied. Fusion is a nuclear reaction that combines light weight elements into heavier elements, releasing massive excess energy. It is, as reporting almost always points out, the process that fuels the sun. Fusion, however, requires tremendous heat and pressure, and it is an incredible engineering challenge to generate those conditions on Earth. There are two basic approaches to doing this.

One method is inertial confinement, where lasers are used to heat a container causing that material to release massive energy causing inward pressure and heat (basically an inward explosion) that then causes the fusion. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the US is the primary experiment working on this approach. Just last month they announced that they achieved “burning plasma”. This also is a nice milestone, but needs to be put into perspective. Burning plasma refers to the state where most of the heat energy that is causing fusion comes from the fusion itself, rather than from an outside source. The next milestone is ignition, where the fusion generates more energy than the entire process consumes. Obviously we need to get there in order to have net energy we can siphon off to generate electricity, otherwise the whole project is just an interesting experiment. The climb from burning plasma to ignition, however, is steep.

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In my opinion one of the most encouraging future technologies that we are developing today is hacking the nervous system through electromagnetic recording and stimulation. Nervous system signals are ultimately electrical, which is convenient because we have an entire mature technology based on controlling the flow of electricity. We also have increasingly powerful computers and software algorithms to both read and recreate these electrical signals. The actual limiting factor with this technology at present is the hardware – the electrodes we use to interface with nervous tissue. As this technology advances, so do our applications.

That is exactly the incremental advance that is now being reported, with specific reference to severe spinal cord injury. However, I think that much of the mainstream reporting is missing some important details. First let’s discuss the actual science – published in Nature is a report on three proof-of-concept cases using spinal cord stimulation to allow those with spinal cord injury to walk. This is old technology, which has been developed over the last several decades, called EES – Epidural Electrical Stimulation. So it is nothing new. The report is about a small but meaningful improvement in the hardware.

The three subjects all had spinal cord injury with complete motor and sensory loss below the level of the injury, which means essentially that they could not move or feel their legs at all. The technology implants electrodes on the dorsal roots below the injury. These are are the trunks of spinal nerves that deliver sensory information to the spinal cord. Why would you stimulate sensory nerves to make the muscles move? Because those signals get into the spinal cord (which is a physically small space) where they stimulate motor neurons. Neuroscientists have learned how to arrange these electrodes to guide these electrical signals to where they want, and keep them from spreading to motor neurons on the other side or ones they don’t want to stimulate. By taking this route they are able to stimulate a group of motor neurons that are typically involved on a motor task, like walking. If they instead stimulated the ventral motor root that would just make the entire leg contract, without having it move in a useful way.

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The latest controversy over Joe Rogan and Spotify is a symptom of a long-standing trend, exacerbated by social media but not caused by it. The problem is with the algorithms used by media outlets to determine what to include on their platform.

The quick summary is that Joe Rogan’s podcast is the most popular podcast in the world with millions of listeners. Rogan follows a long interview format, and he is sometimes criticized for having on guests that promote pseudoscience or misinformation, for not holding them to account, or for promoting misinformation himself. In particular he has come under fire for spreading dangerous COVID misinformation during a health crisis, specifically his interview with Dr. Malone. In an open letter to Rogan’s podcast host, Spotify, health experts wrote:

“With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence,” the letter reads. “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”

Then Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum – either Rogan goes, or he goes. Spotify did not respond, leading to Young pulling his entire catalog of music from the platform. Other artists have also joined the boycott. This entire episode has prompted yet another round of discussion over censorship and the responsibility of media platforms, outlets, and content producers. Rogan himself produced a video to explain his position. The video is definitively not an apology or even an attempt at one. In it Rogan makes two core points. The first is that he himself is not an expert of any kind, therefore he should not be held responsible for the scientific accuracy of what he says or the questions he asks. Second, his goal with the podcast is to simply interview interesting people. Rogan has long used these two points to absolve himself of any journalistic responsibility, so this is nothing new. He did muddy the waters a little when he went on to say that maybe he can research his interviewees more thoroughly to ask better informed questions, but this was presented as more of an afterthought. He stands by his core justifications.

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