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Science

Ghost(s) in the Machine

The phrase Ghost in the Machine was coined by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle to describe the mind/body dualism of Descartes and later philosophers. Ryle picked apart the notion, held since Descartes’ time, that the mind is separable from the body (the ghost and the machine, respectively.) I’m not going to detail the philosophical debate here. I was just reminded of this when thinking about how the mind’s deterioration is based on the body’s (f)ailing in cases like dementia. They are inextricably linked, although we are not yet able to pinpoint the exact mechanism that cause Alzheimers or other forms of dementia. The thoughts were triggered by a work of sound art that has had me reeling over the last week, in all its ghostliness – and its compassion, a musical rendering of the stages of dementia.

What do we know about illnesses like Alzheimer, a specific form of dementia? It is a disease that affects memory, cognition and behavior, eventually interfering with crucial functions in everyday life. It gets progressively worse, with people sometimes living up to 20 years with the condition. There are genetic predispositions (assumed to be present in about 70% of all cases,) but also environmental factors that increase the risk of developing the disease. They include inorganic and organic hazards, long-term exposure to toxic metals (aluminium, copper), pesticides (organochlorine and organophosphate insecticides), industrial chemicals (flame retardants) and air pollutants like the smoke we inhale these days from the fires (particulate matter.)

Brain neurons are killed off, leading to irreversible loss in a process that we have not yet fully understood. We do know, however, that certain changes in the brain are associated with the disease, signs of it. These include two abnormal structures, plaques that are deposits of beta-amyloid protein fragments, and tangles that are twisted fibers of the tau protein. Scientists speculate that these two somehow block communication between neurons and disrupt processes that are needed to keep neurons from withering.

Also on the scene are inflammatory processes, as destructive here as anywhere else in the aging body. It is assumed that neuro-inflammation – the activation of the brain’s resident immune cells – is not merely a consequence of disease progression; rather, it is a cause that actively spreads the pathologically misfolded proteins in the brain.

Treatment options to date are limited and not particularly effective, despite the noise in the news that celebrate every new option as a break through – until it isn’t. Drugs target the plaques and tangles, trying to prevent them from being formed or to destroy them when present. Vaccines are tested to protect against the fiber twisting associated with Tau. Reduction of inflammation is a target, as is the way the brain is vulnerable to shifts in insulin or hormones during menopause (so far, proposed drugs in both categories turned out to be duds.) There is a lot riding on new approaches to heart health. It might be that drugs that combat high blood pressure may reduce the risk of developing dementia. Life style choices – steady exercise and healthy food, living in clean environments, a choice many poor people don’t have – here as everywhere can make a difference, but are no guarantee to resist this scourge.

We can read all this, recognize it intellectually, shudder. Try to forget about it because it is so frightening, no pun intended. We can read stories of individual defiance and positive attitude, and still be overwhelmed by the thoughts of what dementia implies – particularly if we are in an age group where every misplaced key, forgotten shopping list, inability to recall the name of a beloved authors, gives rise to anxiety if something more dire is lurking in our brains.

Yet we can also find a deeper, more empathetic understanding when listening to (some of) the sound scape I want to introduce today. Everywhere at the end of time has generated a lot of attention since its final release, including complaints about psychological upheaval, which I get. But it is also a thing of beauty, on many levels. Created and produced by British electronic musician Leyland Kirby, under the alias the Caretaker, it was released from 2016-2019 in 6 installments meant to reflect the specific stages of the disease. The young composer delved deep into research about the progression of the disease and found ways to represent the process that seem plausible to this listener.

I suggest that the curious listener tap into the segments that designate the stages in which the disease progresses. Spoiler alert: it gets progressively more disjointed, upsetting, and challenging across its 6.5 hour duration. It ends in the very last segment with a strange rendition of a Bach’s chorale (BWV 246, Lasst mich ihn nur noch einmal küssen,) that highlights the centrality of human connection and, when severed, ultimate loss. The subsequent silence and release somehow provides intense comfort.

It cannot have been an easy task for the composer, across so many years, and surely required courage to face the details, since none of us is exempt from the potential to develop dementia, the musician included. As it turns out, the work was not just successful with professional music critics but had a large following, spiking last year, among truly young listeners who engaged with it and each other in emotional, empathetic reactions during a challenge on TikTok.

A full description of the music with analysis can be found here. It is a thoughtful essay by Luka Vukos on Headstuff, a collaborative of creative souls who sift the internet for interesting art content and put it all in one bucket for us to sample. The author points out a parallel to our own experience outside the realm of disease:

“With instant reproducibility and the digital recall of information, it can often feel like we are extricating ourselves from things which might linger for longer than we’d like. We conceive of memories, and of life, as information units, rather than as living things within our heads. Things get deleted with almost no trace, and it’s almost like we’re giving ourselves dementia in a way. But, in this regard, the great paradox of The Caretaker’s body of work rests in his marrying of the earliest form of musical reproduction (the vinyl record) with the most contemporary modes of digital recall and manipulation.

I have listed the title of the tracks below that gives you a thematic progression. The music is characterized by manipulation of old ball room tunes that Kirby found in the record bins of junk stores, then manipulating them with particularized computer programs. The ball room orchestras are first displayed in full, if scratchy with record player needles, but then morph into very different forms. The manipulations are as representative as the mood coloring of classical music of yore, if unfamiliar to those of us not used to listening to experimental music. Any refusal to be dragged into fear or sadness by listening to this marathon is perfectly understandable. But if this work of art has reached just one soul to be more willing or able to change their approach to Alzheimer patients in their current state of being shunned and neglected, has created true empathy, it has made the world a better place. Art, again, as a mediator.

And now I am going to listen to We, so tired of all the darkness in our lives, also by Kirby….

Here is the original Bach aria from the Lukas Passion. With English translation below the heading.

Photographs today are of nature’s fading, due to drought and time of year.

STAGE 1

No.TitleLength
1.“A1 – It’s Just a Burning Memory”3:32
2.“A2 – We Don’t Have Many Days”3:30
3.“A3 – Late Afternoon Drifting”3:35
4.“A4 – Childishly Fresh Eyes”2:58
5.“A5 – Slightly Bewildered”2:01
6.“A6 – Things That Are Beautiful and Transient”4:34
7.“B1 – All That Follows Is True”3:31
8.“B2 – An Autumnal Equinox”2:46
9.“B3 – Quiet Internal Rebellions”3:30
10.“B4 – The Loves of My Entire Life”4:04
11.“B5 – Into Each Others Eyes”4:36
12.“B6 – My Heart Will Stop in Joy”2:41
Total length:41:23

STAGE 2

No.TitleLength
13.“C1 – A Losing Battle Is Raging”4:37
14.“C2 – Misplaced in Time”4:42
15.“C3 – What Does It Matter How My Heart Breaks”2:37
16.“C4 – Glimpses of Hope in Trying Times”4:43
17.“C5 – Surrendering to Despair”5:03
18.“D1 – I Still Feel As Though I Am Me”4:07
19.“D2 – Quiet Dusk Coming Early”3:36
20.“D3 – Last Moments of Pure Recall”3:52
21.“D4 – Denial Unravelling”4:16
22.“D5 – The Way Ahead Feels Lonely”4:15
Total length:41:54

STAGE 3

No.TitleLength
23.“E1 – Back There Benjamin”4:14
24.“E2 – And Heart Breaks”4:05
25.“E3 – Hidden Sea Buried Deep”1:20
26.“E4 – Libet’s All Joyful Camaraderie”3:12
27.“E5 – To the Minimal Great Hidden”1:41
28.“E6 – Sublime Beyond Loss”2:10
29.“E7 – Bewildered in Other Eyes”1:51
30.“E8 – Long Term Dusk Glimpses”3:33
31.“F1 – Gradations of Arms Length”1:31
32.“F2 – Drifting Time Misplaced” (titled “Drifting Time Replaced” on Kirby’s individual YouTube upload for Stage 3)4:15
33.“F3 – Internal Bewildered World”3:29
34.“F4 – Burning Despair Does Ache”2:37
35.“F5 – Aching Cavern Without Lucidity”1:19
36.“F6 – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World”3:36
37.“F7 – Libet Delay”3:57
38.“F8 – Mournful Cameraderie”2:39
Total length:45:35

STAGE 4

No.TitleLength
39.“G1 – Post Awareness Confusions”22:09
40.“H1 – Post Awareness Confusions”21:53
41.“I1 – Temporary Bliss State”21:01
42.“J1 – Post Awareness Confusions”22:16
Total length:87:20

STAGE 5

No.TitleLength
43.“K1 – Advanced Plaque Entanglements”22:35
44.“L1 – Advanced Plaque Entanglements”22:48
45.“M1 – Synapse Retrogenesis”20:48
46.“N1 – Sudden Time Regression into Isolation”22:08
Total length:88:20

STAGE 6

No.TitleLength
47.“O1 – A Confusion So Thick You Forget Forgetting”21:52
48.“P1 – A Brutal Bliss Beyond This Empty Defeat”21:36
49.“Q1 – Long Decline Is Over”21:09
50.“R1 – Place in the World Fades Away”21:19
Total length:85:57

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Thistles and Neuronal Networks

I intend to keep my promise to write this week about nothing but uplifting, constructive or beautiful things that I find right under my nose. Here is the second installment, triggered by the beauty of thistles that are in full thistle-down stage in the meadows around me. The fluff formations always remind me of neuronal networks and so it was no coincidence that I ended up looking at neuroscience art. What I settled on, though, were not images, but a truly fun experience with language that you all can have as well.

Among the contestants of the 2021 Art of Neuroscience Contest was an entry by Simon Demeule and Pauline Palma from the University of Montreal/McGill University, an interactive program called

What Lies Ahead.

If you click the link it will bring up a few words of explanation and then the invitation to start writing – just type in your first line (no need to click anywhere) and you will see what unfolds. The program is an interactive poetic experience that explores themes of artificial intelligence, language, psychology, and intent. Here is their explanation:

Through a simple text-based interface, this piece creates a game of exquisite corpse between the participant and a text-generating AI, an altered version of GPT-2 trained on the vast Gutenberg English literature corpus. As the synthetic responses unfold, words cascade through all configurations considered by the algorithm, partly unveiling the black box process within. The human tendencies captured by the algorithm resurface, produced by a machine that fundamentally lacks intent. 

As the participant is presented with ambiguity and absurdity, their cognitive ability to bridge gaps and construct meaning becomes the guiding force that steers the evolution of the piece. In turn, participant’s input feeds the algorithm, thereby prompting interpretation again. Through this cyclical, almost conversational process, a unique poem emerges. 

This project was created through the Convergence Initiative, an organisation dedicated to encouraging interdisciplinary work between the arts and sciences.

I tried it out immediately and realized it would not give me the whole poem at the end. I then took screenshots of the evolution of the next “poem”. Here is what AI and I came up with, our combined brilliance now preserved for all posterity …(Their text on white background):

It is really a fun process if a little disjointed, so I tried once again. Note it is an AI program that was trained on literary Greats, randomly sampling and weighing and spitting out these words.

And here is a poem when a gifted, emotional, no-holds barred wordsmith attacks the thistle theme:

Thistles

by Ted Hughes

Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.

Then they grow grey like men.
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

Can we all agree we should leave poetry to actual human beings on their own???

If you still have time and inclination, go back to the art of neuroscience site and look at the other entries – there is so much ingenuity to explore, photography and sculpture included. 175 contestants from over 20 countries submitted nearly 300 submissions, of which one winner and several honorable mentions and staff picks were published.

Album today is Robert Burn’s poetry set to music. The thistle is Scotland’s national flower.

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Giant Troubles

Some nights ago at the dinner table we once again joked about how utterly different we are from each other (you can do that safely after some 40 years of marriage.) These differences are nowhere more pronounced than in our approach to dealing with lurking disaster. Where my beloved tries to keep it out of mind until it HAS to be tackled, I like to stare the dragon in the eye well in advance, if only to communicate that he’s found a foe at eye-level… but really to prepare myself for all that might be in the wings. This attitude – rather than morbidity – is the reason why I read everything about cancer that I can get my hands on, curious about both the nature of the beast, and the nature of the medical system bent on fighting the scourge. (I’ve previously written about it from a cancer patient’s perspective here.)

Some of the most interesting writing comes from scientists who work in the field and share both of these questions; some comes from perceptive novelists who cloak their knowledge in tapestries of stories easier to comprehend. I’ve come across both types recently and thought I’d offer a summary of what I’ve learned.

Here is the good news: People live longer. Here is the bad news: geriatric populations are increasingly susceptible to cancer, and are often only diagnosed when the cancer has spread (metastatic cancer.)

Here is the good news: cancer research is laser-like focused on developing drugs that deal with this problem. Here is the bad news: we will have a market demand to the tune of 111.16 billion dollars by 2027 to treat global metastatic cancer, because the incidence of cancer, particularly breast cancer, is generally on the rise, independent of an aging population.

Here is the good news: there are more and more specialized tools aimed at spread and/or recurrence of cancer. In addition to traditional chemotherapy we have targeted chemo therapy with far fewer side effects, hormone therapy and immunotherapy. Here is the bad news: almost all of these new approaches cannot cure metastatic disease and extend life expectancy by, if you are lucky, a few years, but usually more in the ball park of months. We have not been able to eradicate the disease any more than we did over the last century, with minor exceptions, facing 10 million cancer deaths around the world each year.

It is, of course, nothing to scoff at to have more time to live – I am the last person to be casual about that. And maybe the advances in metastatic cancer research will lead to the realization of permanent remissions or even prevention, eventually. It is also understandable that a for-profit industry focusses on where the demand lies: in desperate patients’ plea for help, to the tune of $ 10.000 a month which these medications now cost in the majority of targeted approaches. Why explore ways to prevent cancer in the first place when that will affect the bottomline of an industry treating it? I guess, theoretically, you could make a fortune on selling preventative medications as well, should you be able to develop them, – never mind the favor to mankind to eradicate the scourge – but then again, people might have very different thresholds to spend money on a potential threat compared to spending money when the threat is actually consuming their bodies.

The good news: some determined scientists are nonetheless pursuing the holy grail: understanding the history of the first cell that eventually morphs into the disease. Here is a thought-provoking compilation of essays that help laypeople like me understand how the science proceeds. Azra Raza, the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York, lays out what we know about carcinogenesis, and reports on the obstacles faced by research into the way cancer comes into existence.

She describes in clear language (and delightfully poignant literary references) what cognitive biases drive medical research (independent of potent economic forces like grant money or market demands.) She explains why we are seemingly stuck in a rut, continuing to look for answers in places where we have not found them, late in the game of spreading cells. (I have been told that big pharma is now on to this, pouring a lot of money into curative or pre-causative research, contrary to her claims.)

Her suggestion is to focus instead on the pathways that first cells take before they morph into the beast that precedes the body’s breakdown, describing an “organized decay, consecutive and slow, sometimes taking years, slipping—slipping, until the crash comes,” located in one of the body’s immune cells.

“Cancer can be perceived as an independent life-form. It is not a parasite because it originates in the host tissue. It is not a “normal” tissue culture cell line that has been induced to grow in vitro, already half-way to transformation. And it is not like jellyfish and other lower order species that can revert to an earlier stage of their lifecycle under stress and restart as newborns. It behaves like a new animal that arises within an animal...I propose that the fertilization step involves the fusion of a blood cell with a stressed tissue cell that initiates the murderous journey. A Giant cell is born containing opposing, conflicting, paradoxical “multitudes” within it.“

Researchers who look into these cells found that they unexpectedly appeared when cells are under stress, for cancer cells brought on by chemotherapy, for example. More precisely, these giant cells are a state of cancer cell, one where cell division is paused during external attack; instead, the cell doubles or fuses its genome, protecting its DNA. When the stressor is gone, the cell reignites division and sends now more resilient progeny on their way to distant sites, more aggressively growing and invasive cancer cells – treatment-resistant metastases.

These giant cells happen under normal circumstances to protect us in times of stress and are benign. So what turns them into a malignant state? That is where research must be done – and incentivized – exploring that moment of transition and the causes that come before. (Or so it is suggested – I am not trained in oncology, so can just report what I read. )

I am not trained as a scholar of literature, either, but I do know what I like to read. And Margaret Drabble’s The Dark Flood Rising is among the best recent books capturing aging, disease and dying in not at all morose ways. In fact, it is witty, as is her wont, but also genuinely humane, and precisely observed. It had me laugh and cry in alternation. It also had me grateful for making me think about cancer not as some dire, biologically hard to understand, scientifically mysterious thing (as the medical literature does) but as a condition that requires an appropriate human response, be that determination, or patience, or courage, or humor, or tears, or …. I’ll won’t be able to list the whole repertoire. The point is, there are humanistic aspects of dealing with or learning to deal with illness that go beyond the understanding that would allow us to synthesize some miracle medication. These aspects are somewhat in our control which is the most comforting thought of all.

Photographs of jellyfish today, reminding me of giant cells, emphasize that blobs can contain beauty, too, not just destructive potential.

Music today is derived from a literature overview of how music affects cell growth, cell migration, proliferation, colony formation, and differentiation ability or death of cancer cells. Folks, I have no clue if these experiments are viable (although they are published in respectable medical journals.) It was just strange to read that different music has different effects. Note, these are done with cell cultures in the lab, under carefully controlled conditions, not in humans who listen to music, so it is unclear how much we can transfer anything of this to actually listening to music.

The first movement from Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, KV. 488 seems not to affect some type of human breast cancer cells (MCF-7) but caused cell death (apoptosis) in another one (MDA-MD-231.)

Ligeti’s first movement of Atmospheres, on the other hand, caused significant cell death in MCF-7 cells that had ignored Mozart….

Riddle me that.

PS: Just so you know how things work around here – this is the response I got across the breakfast table to today’s musings:

So here’s part of my view of upcoming disasters or threats….

You’ve heard this stanza from me before.

From Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
 And having once turned round walks on,
 And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

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More Musings from under the Butterfly Bush

Might as well continue where we left off Monday – free associating under the butterfly bush.

Today’s photographic subject are the butterflies feeding on the blossoms. My mind, though, is preoccupied with water. Or, more precisely, with the fact that I try to water as sparingly as I can because of the drought, leaving whole swaths of the yard completely un-watered, but feel guilty even then. Which led to thoughts about sources of water and, I knew I’d get there eventually, dowsing.

Dowsing, the assumed discovery of hidden water sources by specially abled people holding a forked stick, defies, of course, the laws of physics. It is a myth that has never held up to scientific scrutiny. Note, I am willing to get into (not so hidden) hot water, in contrast to Adam Savage from Myth Busters who always declined to test the subject for fear of having to shame millions of people who believe in the myth. Why do I want to go there?

The recent up-tick in reports on and discussions of dowsing, like this NYT article, for example, can be explained by our preoccupation with the horrendous effects of droughts. The reporting is, however, completely irresponsible when it describes perspectives from both sides, believers and critics, as if there was not one valid, scientific truth. “Both sides” being given equal voice, unchallenged, is a huge problem. Below is the summary of the actual data in a nicely detailed historical write-up.

Witching for water

It bugs me to no end. Why do I get so irked when the media provide a platform to both sides of a “so-called dispute?” Let me count the ways: this is about facts, not about political disagreement. If you provide a soap box for people who deny or falsify the facts you potentially allow those misapprehensions to spread. If it is not outspokenly challenged in a reputable, national newspaper (if you are willing to call the NYT that) it signals legitimacy of these claims, however hedgingly you provide short glimpses of the opposing side (the scientists.) And last but not least, in an age and political environment where science denial has become a flag for tribal membership, it supports the wrong conclusion – that hunches and scientific method are on equal footing.

How far spread this both-sidesim for dowsing goes can be found here. It is the general politicization of science, though, which is the bigger problem. A Gallup Poll published 4 days ago found that trust in science has considerably declined, and large partisan gap has emerged, with Republicans becoming much less confident at the same time that Democrats are becoming more so. It is far less correlated with educational levels, and much more with party membership. The step from mistrusting science regarding water witches (who cares) to mistrusting science about climate change or Covid-19 vaccine safety is a small one. One with huge implications, however, as we all know. That’s where we DO care, and are direly dependent on the media to present the factual picture to combat mistaken beliefs. If you have a few minutes, read this Scientific American essay on why there is a war on against science and why the media play such crucial role in it.

In the meantime, I’ll go back to watching butterflies, although they disappear too, just like the truth…

Two Butterflies went out at Noon—

Emily Dickinson – 1830-1886

Two Butterflies went out at Noon—
And waltzed above a Farm—  
Then stepped straight through the Firmament  
And rested on a Beam—  

And then—together bore away 
Upon a shining Sea—  
Though never yet, in any Port—  
Their coming mentioned—be—  

If spoken by the distant Bird— 
If met in Ether Sea
By Frigate, or by Merchantman— 
No notice—was—to me—

And here it is sung…..

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Defying the Laws of Gravity

Todays’ blog is brought to you by my garden’s hummingbirds. Now that the Buddleia is in bloom they are regular visitors. It takes some patience to stand under the bush (while cursing under my breath because my camera’s focus function has decided to be uncooperative, another spendy repair in the offing) and wait for the birds to appear. Of course they do not defy the laws of gravity, but it looks as if they do when they arrive and seemingly hang still in the air, sucking nectar.

Thoughts of physics reminded me of a photographer, Berenice Abbott (1889 – 1991) who excelled at photographing principles of physics. Her interest in documenting scientific principles and teaching the role of science in photography came late in her life, after she had already a stellar career excelling in all kinds of subject areas within the domaine of photography. Early in life she gained renown by her portrait photography of European artists and intellectuals of the Paris of the 1920s. In the 1930s she turned to documentary photography of the city of New York (funded by the FAP) and rural America in the aftermath of the Depression. Eventually she focussed on science, becoming the photography editor for Science Illustrated and producing scientific images for the textbook American High School Biology. The Physical Science Study Committee of Educational Services published a new physics book in the 1950s with all of the images almost exclusively by Abbott.

Circular Wave System Photograph MIT Museum

My kind of woman, always willing to take a risk to pursue her passion, never narrowly focussed on one single domain, and open to acknowledging the giants who paved the way (she had an absolute crush on the work of Eugene Atget, one of the pioneers of documentary photography.) In fact, she managed to rescue his collection of plates after his death and promoted his work throughout her lifetime.

I first saw her work at the MIT museum. One of the reviews of a solo exhibition claimed:

“Berenice Abbott’s science photographs invite us to contemplate the wonder of creation. As photographs utilizing the latest technology to illustrate scientific principles they are quintessentially modern, but the principles they illustrate came into being simultaneously with the Big Bang, so the images are also timeless, taking us both backward and forward throughout eternity. By making manifest the invisible forces that act upon the material world, they do for physics what the mandala does for Hindu theogony, or Kabbalistic diagrams of the sefirot try to do for the Ineffable.”

Hmm. Do we have to reach into the religious accomplishment-drawers to establish the value of photographic images? I’m certain she would have scoffed at that kind of comparison, seeing the wonder of creation too often subdued or undermined by a different kind of invisible hand – the economic and political forces that ruthlessly ignored the distress of the poor. As the photo-historian Terri Weisman explains, Abbott was interested in “how the things in the world reveal the world.” Abbot was labeled a communist by the McCarthy administration. Her life-long distrust of politics and economic institutions led to a catastrophe in late life: she had put her considerable life’s earnings converted to gold coins in a home safe and boxes stored in her house, all lost during a burglary in 1984. A great biography of Abbot can be found here.

The chain of associations while sitting under my butterfly bush eventually hit on the talents of a younger generation explicitly inspired by Abbott’s work and interests. Here are some ingenious images of the base quantities of physics generated by Greg White. As defined by the International System of Quantities (ISQ), these are time (second, s); mass (kilogram, kg); length (metre, m); temperature (kelvin, K); amount of substance (mole, mol); electric current (ampere, A); and luminous intensity (candela, cd). White captured all with props, ingeniously arranged and camera, no other manipulations. (Photos from his website, linked above.)

Electric Current
Length
Luminous Intensity
Mass
Amount of Substance
Temperature
Time

I’ll stick to capturing my little birds, wondrous in their own ways, and reading about all these interesting minds coming up with ways to depict the rest of the world. Not least because I always struggled with physics.


Hummingbird Music by Leonard Cohen, from the album Thanks for the Dance.

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The Punch of Numbers

Do you know that feeling when you are focused on a particular thing and all of sudden you have experiences that are either directly or vaguely related? You hope to get pregnant, (all those decades ago, for some of us,) and start to notice pregnant women everywhere, baby clothes stores popping up in unexpected locations, lullabies being broadcast on your classical radio station? I’m sure you can come up with multiple comparable examples.

Lately, I have been focused on numbers. Numbers people are asking those poor doctors, who struggle to paint a hopeful picture, which might or might not be misleading. Number of stages, of treatments available, number of side effects, number of years that signal a future, or not. Numbers that are given in averages, since that is what basic statistical evaluations will provide. Averages that some happily accept if they speak in their favor, or qualify with “each case is special” if they don’t. Averages that might rely on way too few data points, or be weakened by insufficient randomization. Averages that mean, honestly, nothing if they are not accompanied by information about variability, which patients won’t receive, or might not even know about and consider relevant, if they were not trained as scientists.

Wouldn’t you know it, some complex issues around numbers promptly popped up in my daily readings.

A fascinating discourse on what numbers are used – and which are left out – in the reporting on countries’ death rates from Covid-19, for example. Here I learned about how informations is given in absolute numbers, by news outlets all across the world, telling us how many people died in each country. Huge numbers, to be sure, unfathomably horrifying numbers, if you look, for example, at India. Has anybody noticed that the relative number, when counting numbers of the deceased in proportion to the size of any country’s population, (India has 1.392 billion inhabitants) spells out that pandemic loss of life in the United Kingdom was much higher than what is happening in India? Even if you account for bad data collection and multiply the official numbers given by the Indian government by a factor of four?

Then again, (and I am summarizing what I learned) the numbers that are not captured, either by design or by the difficulty of collecting them, could tell a more complete picture. How many people were sent back to their Indian home villages, dying of poverty-induced hunger or disease, or accidents in dangerous travel condition? What hit did an economy take that had not provided an even barely adequate health care system in a country that has no social safety net?

Closer to home, what numbers were or are suppressed in regard to heightened endangerment of susceptible populations? The elderly are still dying in great numbers in nursing homes, but no-one mentions them anymore after the first wave subsided. The poverty divide, etched along racial lines, is not often captured in the numbers presented in the general news media. (You can get to them by going to governmental/CDC website, which I strongly discourage, given the depressing nature of the data.)

What other numbers never enter the printed press or the evening news? Have you had daily updates on tuberculosis cases, even if every year it causes the death of around 1.7 million people? Or the 1.4 million people who die every year in car accidents?

Was it just that the pandemic was new, affording heightened attention? Or did publication of these numbers have to do with the need to keep populations sufficiently fearful so that they would passively accept heightened lockdown measures and other deprivations, sparing the government the economic and political cost of enacting them by force, police measures included?

Numbers as a form of indoctrination might make you shrug, or confirm your beliefs about statistics as the biggest lies of all. They do have consequences, though. If people who work one hour per week are taken out of the unemployment numbers because, they have, after all, worked!, it points a certain picture that might benefit governmental goals and policies. These, in turn, might hurt some populations and help others, depending what kind of government we elected.

The consequences can be deadly. Here is an example of the typical number problem in service of Nazi Eugenics presented to my parents and their age-mates in the late 1930s in every German middle school book.(Source here.)

“To keep a mentally ill person costs approximately 4 marks a day. There are 300,000 mentally ill people in care. How much do these people cost to keep in total? How many marriage loans of 1000 marks could be granted with this money?”

I do not have to spell out the pathway from these seeds of numerical indoctrination to the T-4 Euthanasia program of 1940, which murdered 200.000 disabled people in the next 5 years.

Given how much of a punch numbers can pull, it is truly important to figure out how they were collected, which were included and which ignored, who collected them, and what purpose they serve. Now I am stuck with the question how all the media seem so seamlessly clued in as to what is desirable to report and what not, even outside of state-sponsored broadcasting. A better preoccupation than worrying about medical numbers, I guess.

Here are fewthrown out by W.A.Mozart, some happy numbers (Figaro) , and some cruel ones…(Don Giovanni.)

Here is a short article on Mozart’s fascination with numbers, as well as that of other composers. In case you need to read something a little more cheerful.

Photographs today are of patterns that invite counting.

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Scents and Sensibility

When you catch me reading Popular Mechanics you know something is off. Well, you should know if you are a regular reader. In fact, all of today’s musings came about because something was off: my (insensible) assumption that irises have no smell. From flowers to a popular mechanics article – it’s been an interesting ride. Let me drag you along.

I have been photographing irises in my neighborhood across the last week, thinking I might do a bit on painters who were drawn to these showy plants. Along the way I was wondering why some flowers smell and others don’t, believing that the latter was true for irises. It turns out they do smell, if faintly, as long as you stick your nose into the blossom. It also seems to be the case that the rarest of perfume ingredients is delivered by irises, although by their roots – orris roots. The reason the stuff is so precious has to do with the fact that when you harvest the rhizomes you have to store them (insect- and fungus-proof) for 3 to 4 years in order for them to develop some scent.

My general question about smell vs no smell had a pretty straightforward answer: if plants are pollinated by birds (wildflowers, hibiscus and many other tropical plants, for example) then scent is unnecessary since birds don’t have an olfactory sense. If plants need insect pollinators, then they want to smell good to guide bees or other critters to the blossoms. And here it gets truly interesting: there is an insane calibration going on between what insects are around, when they are around, and how the plants maximize their attractiveness in idiosyncratic ways. (I was told across the dinner table that all that is taught in 5th grade – well, I must have played hooky…)

Let’s start with time: flowers who are pollinated by moths or bats smell the strongest in the evening into the night. Others prefer morning or afternoon, depending on who is most active during those times, bees and butterflies included. The period before blossoms open widely, and when they are almost spent and have been already sufficiently pollinated, matter as well. During these times the plant produces few volatiles (as the scent molecules are called in science speak), sparing their pollinators effort without reward.

Each scent sends specific signals, often across long distances, attracting those who are the best match. Species pollinated by bees and flies have sweet scents, while those pollinated by beetles have strong musty, spicy, or fruity smells. Successful pollination is of course essential to agricultural crops and fruit-bearing trees, so maximizing your chances of getting the right insect to the right plant is what scent is all about.

Next, leave it to us humans to put a wrench in the works. Flowers smell far less intensely these days than they used to. Selective breeding of flowers has focused on many attributes, all of which seem to have had a detrimental effect on the genetic make-up responsible for odors. Breeders in the cut-flower and ornamental plants market have concentrated on aesthetics (color and shape,)improved vase life and shipping characteristics.So long, scents….

Which finally brings me to Popular Mechanics, where I found, while learning about all this genetic engineering, an article that talks about genetic engineering of scents in reverse order. The plants are no longer among us, but scientists are able to recreate their scent with pretty nifty synthetic chemistry. Scientists from a Boston-based synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks, a smell researcher and an artist teamed up to re-create the scents from extinct plants. They got DNA extracted from specimens of three plants stored at Harvard University’s Herbaria, and used synthetic biology to predict and resynthesize gene sequences that might be responsible for the smell. Using Ginkgo’s findings, Sissel Tolaas used her expertise to reconstruct the flowers’ smells in her lab, using identical or comparative smell molecules.

The smells they tried to resurrect were from plants that where killed off by human expansion: Hibiscadelphus wilderianus, a plant from Hawaii last seen in 1912, destroyed by cattle ranching; Orbexilum stipulatum, a scurf pea that was drowned when a dam built in the Ohio River flooded its habitat in 1920; and the Wynberg Conebush, native to South Africa, superseded by vineyards in Cape Town. The collaborative work was eventually made into an interactive art exhibit, Resurrecting the Sublime, which can be visited here, should you want to travel again. The video in this link tells the whole story.

Nature. Science. Art. All you’ve come to expect to read about in this space. Just tell me, how do I fit in the politics?

Music today is from a few centuries apart. Haydn addressing the flower and Ibarrondo perhaps a woman, but we can pretend it’s the flower. Enough flowing ruffles in the composition to match the blossoms….

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Shift in Beliefs

Let’s assume you are – unjustly – accused of a crime since you happened to be on site when the police arrived. They drag you with them to be interrogated, convinced you are lying when you profess your innocence.

Do you have a clue what behaviors to avoid so you won’t reinforce the false assumption that you are lying? Should you avert your gaze or consistently meet the interrogator’s eyes? Should you sit extra still since fidgeting might be misinterpreted? Should you avoid rapid blinking or fiddling with your hair, yawning, complaining or covering your mouth while speaking? Should you cross your arms or your legs or avoid either? Should you concentrate on the pitch of your voice unless it is too high or too low? Should you be strongly emotional or rather reserved? As you might have guessed, these behavioral cues are believed to be evidence of lying, to the point where police and administrative agencies like the TSA print them on training manuals available for agents tasked with lie detection.

There is just one problem: a l l of them are believed to be behavioral signs of lying and n o n e of these have been proven to be reliable indicators of lying. Decades of scientific research both in the lab and in real-life, field scenarios debunked the notion that behaviors of certain kinds enable lie detection. (I am summarizing the long version of the findings which can be found here.)

Many international police departments have acknowledged these facts and are retraining their personell. Not so in this country where police and TSA stick to their old assumptions, regardless of the tragic consequences. People have served decades for murder in prison because they were found too stoic or too hysteric during interrogations, only to be later exonerated by other evidence.

In fact, departments are offering workshops and courses, spending inordinate amounts of money on them, that are reinforcing the old stereotypic beliefs, offering pseudoscience if not outright junk science as an alternative to the real thing. You wonder why. Why is there no shift in beliefs? Seriously, what is the motivation? Particularly since we have indications that there are other, more effective ways to actually spot lies, ways that do not focus on behavior but verbal cues? Give a suspect more time to speak freely in interview and they are likely to provide contradictions if lying, allowing the interviewer to spot liars accurately way above chance. Or access spatial memory, by having suspects draw maps of the crime or alibi scene. It turns out truth tellers report many more details in comparison to liars. UK police now regularly use this sketching method, having seen a significant improvement in lie detection.

Here are a few hypotheses about administrative preference for pseudoscience from researchers in the field who struggle to find more reliable ways of detecting lies.

  • “…unlike scientific knowledge, pseudoscientific claims offer immediate and easy solutions to complex challenges. They are thus particularly enticing. For example, the work of security and justice professionals could be facilitated by the use of highly accurate lie detectors during their daily face-to-face interactions. While science cannot offer such devices because they simply do not exist, pseudoscientific claims can be tailored to the needs of professionals and appear to be nearly infallible. Practitioners with limited knowledge of science and seeking a silver bullet might find these claims quite appealing.” — Science is complicated. Even if you are open to science you might nonetheless bite when someone dangles a simple solution in front of you cloaked in scientific jargon.
  • “The lack of specific or general scientific knowledge could partly explain why some organizations turn to pseudoscience and pseudoscientific techniques. “if organizations in the fields of security and justice do not lack specific or general scientific knowledge, they might turn to pseudoscience because they ignore the importance of science to improve their professional practices.” — Our national failure to provide good science education has long-lasting consequences.
  • “Some organizations in the fields of security and justice have probably turned to pseudoscience because they underestimate the disadvantages (and overestimate the advantages) of using programs, methods, and approaches that, on the surface, seem scientific but, in reality, are not.” — This is possible, but two other factors need to be added when comparing how backward we are as a country compared to others in their approach to adequate interviewing. One factor is sheer size: to re-educate a few hundred or even a couple of thousand officers, sheriffs and the like in, say, Great Britain, is easy compared to the number of police we have in this country. The outreach would be an enormous undertaking. Which brings us to the second factor: we have no centralized control of the police in this country. There are so many diverse organizations, so many different power hierarchies, varying from state to state, that unified reform is practically unthinkable, even if the will existed.

If I say it’s harrowing yet unsurprising, in a nation where science bashing is fashionable and power structures are cemented in, I ain’t lying.

Photographs today are of a place that calms me down when I am thoroughly irritated as when thinking through the issues above.

Music by contemporary composer David Lang, about what else, cheating, lying, stealing…..

And a shout out to the kind beings who drove me out there and back, patiently shuffling alsongside of me…

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Size Sizzlers

Remember all those times you were told size doesn’t matter? They lied.

No lies about size, though, when it comes to gorillas beating their chest. It turns out that those percussive sounds of gorillas drumming against their upper chest reveal accurate information about their size. The bigger the gorilla the lower the frequency of the sounds, possibly because bigger gorillas have larger air sacs near their larynx. This means that chest-beating isn’t just a visual display, but what a study calls an “honest signal of competitive ability.” And wouldn’t you know it, the bigger males attract the females, after all.

Gorillas stand up and thump their chests with cupped hands, not fists, which allows for a sound that can be heard up to half a mile way, signaling to females from other troops where the best mating choices lie. Not only that, it also informs other males if and when to choose to get into dominance fights – thus actually preventing aggression, since it makes smaller gorillas think twice. Or whatever the equivalence is in gorilla decision making….

They don’t thump all day; and apparently each one has a signature rhythm that allows them to be identified.And they are not the only ones. Honest acoustic cues to size can be found in the bellows of alligators and the vocalizations of North American Bisons, to name just a few, with those who have longer vocal tracts mating more successfully.

And if you don’t have a voice? No problem! Funnel-web building spiders, for example, use their body weight directly. It determines their web vibrations, so that conspecific receivers can reliably predict a potential opponent’s competitive abilities. Get that net swinging!

And then there are the Indian jumping ants. They are the first species that we know of that can voluntarily shrink their brains up to 25% – all in the service of their ovaries that swell up to five times their earlier size when energy used for the brain is rerouted. They do this when a queen dies, eliciting competition between these emerging pseudo-queens, one of whom takes the prize with the biggest reproductive system. Normally colonies die off when their queen goes. This system makes these specific colonies functionally immortal.

Not only that. If they didn’t make the cut, they can regrow their brains and revert to the previous existence as a worker ant. Oh, as a dear reader recently declared about nature’s tricks: ASTOUNDING!

Now all we need to learn is how to prevent our own involuntary shrinking of brains by any degree…

Here is traditional Rwandan music to end the week. Enjoy the sunshine!

Photographs are of things that are small and beautiful and blissfully silent.

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Magicicada Mysteries

If creepy-crawlies give you the creeps you might consider skipping today’s blog. Not for the faint of heart. But, oh, so fascinating in terms of what nature has, once again, to offer, and in terms of the utter cluelessness of science in answering some very big questions. Skip right to the end to listen to Bartok’s piano piece which will enrich your day.

2021 is the year where the central and eastern U.S. is expecting a mass emergence of cicadas, millions and millions of them who leave their burrows underground and climb the trees in synchronized fashion, for a 6 week-short life- span of reproduction after having been underground for 17 years.

They are known as periodical cicadas. Only 7 of the 300 species of cicadas worldwide have this strange life rhythm, waiting for 17 or 13 years, respectively, to then come up all at once. While developing underground they suck the liquid of plant roots, apparently counting the seasonal pulsed of fluid flowing from those roots – when the plants have completed 13 or 17 cycles and the temperature has gotten warm enough (65º/18º) they know to emerge. During the long time underground they molt their shells 5 times – and not all at the same speed. But somehow towards the end of that interval the more developed nymphs wait and the lagging ones catch up, so the they are all ready for time x, ready to fly and populate the trees where they mate and lay eggs. No one knows how they pull that off.

Unlike locusts that devour crops, cicadas are good for our ecosystem. Their weight en masse in the trees helps to prune weak branches, they release tons of nutrients into the soil after death and they serve as an abundant food source for all kinds of predators, four-legged and winged varieties included. This despite the fact that the sheer number of bugs (as many as 1.5 million may crowd a single acre) has anyone of them at practically zero risk for being breakfast, lunch or dinner. Although interestingly – and here is one of the unanswered questions – bird populations that are normally predators of annual cicadas decline just at the point where the periodical cicadas emerge. In the years before and after these birds a back to their normal population density.

So why these prime numbers – 13, 17, – for the emergence? We do not know for sure. Some mathematicians have offered the following hypothesis:

Both 13 and 17 are prime numbers, meaning they’re divisible only by 1 and themselves. This means that emergences rarely overlap with predator population cycles that occur in shorter intervals. For example, if cicadas emerged every 10 years, they’d be susceptible to predators whose population boomed on a cycle of one, two, five or 10 years. If they came out every 12 years, they’d be a tasty snack for any predator on a cycle of one, two, three, four, six or 12 years. Thirteen years, though? Only one and 13. The same goes for a 17-year cycle.

Climate change might put and end to that, too. Scientist are seeing shorter emergence cycles on the horizon for cicadas, prompted by ever warmer temperature and speculated to come down to something like 9 years in the future – no longer a prime number. This implies far more exposure to predators, obviously.

Cicadas have one natural enemy that is not affected by time spans at all: a fungus named Massaspora which does an ugly job on them. Its spores colonize the backend of the bugs, disintegrating it while the cicadas are alive, while injecting the them with a compound similar to amphetamine that keeps them moving while dying. Thus they disseminate the spores across a larger area. For male cicadas it also has the weird effect that they start flicking their wings like females, attracting other males who then try to mate, getting immediately infected. Told you it would get creepy.

The short clip below is a marvel of time-lapse photography showing the life cycle of cicadas.

Photographs are of Maryland and Massachusetts birds, cardinals in particular, that will be in shorter supply this year.

And maybe not the best way to play: saxophone amidst the cicadas.

Here is a different musical take: “The most obsessive admirer of bugs was Bela Bartók. The Hungarian composer evoked the cicada in his 1926 piano suite Out of Doors, the fourth movement of which is called “The Night’s Music.” Here Bartók piles up tone clusters to create an eerie evocation of frogs, birds and cicadas that are audible right from the very beginning.”

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