"Better Ways Than BMI to Measure Obesity"
There is a reality to data and that is that most commonly a data point is meaningless without context. Whether that context is historical (the data is going up! the data is going down!) or context of additional variables. For example, someone telling you a weather forecast is useless without knowing where they are forecasting. Usually the answer is locally based, but if you turn on the news and hear about the blizzard that is coming, but you look outside and it is sunny with no clouds in the sky and no snow on the ground, well, this might need some clarification.
BMI is another example of this. The basis of the ranges were determined from white men, and then extrapolated to other genders and races. And also without context to underlying causes of obesity. The AMA is attempting to get physicians to decrease their usage of BMI as a standalone measurement and instead put forward other things, such as direct measuring of body fat, etc.
But now BMI should be given much less importance, the American Medical Association (AMA) says. Last month the leading physician's group recommended that practitioners de-emphasize BMI because it can get weight-related health risks wrong, especially when used as the sole diagnostic tool. The policy announcement also noted that BMI, originally developed from data on non-Hispanic white men, has played a role in perpetuating "racist exclusion" and causing "historical harm" by misidentifying the weight status of people in many racial and ethnic minority groups.
In discussing what to use in place of BMI:
That's essentially a tape measure around the waist. And the American Heart Association uses it to classify abdominal obesity at 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men, right?
Correct. But we should avoid repeating past mistakes by relying on waist circumference instead of directly measuring body fat. Like BMI, the standard cutoff values for waist circumference are based on white populations, so they may not be universally applicable. Waist circumference does not consider variations in height either, which is why incorporating additional measures such as waist-to-height ratio is important for a comprehensive assessment.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach for diagnosing obesity. It's a complex disease and should be assessed using multiple measures.
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No, the human genome has not been sequenced--yet
No human genome has ever been read in its entirety before. This year, scientists expect to pass that milestone for the first time.
Before the end of 2023, you should be able to read something remarkable. It will be the story of a single individual, who they are and where they come from – and it will offer hints about what their future holds. It probably won't be the most entertaining read on first glance, and it will be very, very long. But it will be a seminal moment – the publication online of the entire genome of a human being, end to end with no gaps.
[...]
This year, for the first time, the entire genome of a single human being – a man named Leon Peshkin – is due to be released.
This complete, single human genome will be a monumental technical achievement. Only 70 years have passed since the double-helix structure of DNA was first revealed, thanks in part to a grainy black and white image taken by Rosalind Franklin, transforming our understanding of how genetic information is stored.
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The trichromats are indeed better at finding brightly colored fruit, but the dichromats surpass them at finding insects disguised as leaves and sticks. Without a riot of colors to confuse or distract them, they’re better at detecting borders and shapes, and seeing through camouflage.
Fascinating stuff from An Immense World as I read last night. Both for the animal vision insights, but it also made me think about living in this era of big data and the similarities to where businesses with big data are trying to be better at seeing trends but sometimes they might miss the smaller events which make up these trends.
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"Kansas research shows reintroducing bison on tallgrass prairie doubles plant diversity"
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Roger Penrose on Consciousness and Neuroscience
Lex Fridman talking with Roger Penrose, this is a superb conversation where one of the world's preeminent scientists confesses the level of not-knowing which is going on in their field.
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O, A, B, and AB aren't the only blood types, in fact, it's far more complicated
This article on Wired is quite good and was eye opening for me. I conceptually knew it was more complicated than the simple A+/-, B+/-, AB+/- and O+/-, but I had no idea that it seems to be one of the hotly explored areas of modern human medicine.
On average, one new blood classification system has been described by researchers each year during the past decade. These newer systems tend to involve blood types that are mind-bogglingly rare but, for those touched by them, just knowing that they have such blood could be lifesaving.
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A Biochemist’s View of Life’s Origin Reframes Cancer and Aging
I've added his book to my always-growing list of books to read. Boling below is Quanta's question which he answers:
Your book argues that the flow of energy and matter structures the evolution of life and is how metabolism “conjures genes into existence.” What’s the most compelling reason to think metabolism, not genetic information, evolved first?
The purist view of “information first” is the RNA world, where some process in the environment makes nucleotides, and the nucleotides go through a process that makes them link up into polymer chains. Then we have a population of RNAs, and they invent everything, because they’re capable of both catalyzing reactions and copying themselves. But then how did the RNAs invent all of metabolism, cells, spatial structure and so on? Genes don’t actually do that even today. Cells come from cells, and genes go along for the ride. So why would genes do it at the very beginning?
And how would they do it? Let’s say there are 10 steps in a biochemical pathway, and any one step by itself is not of much use. Every product in a pathway would have to be useful for it to evolve, which is not the case. It just looks so difficult to evolve even a single pathway.
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Information about breastfeeding for World Breastfeeding Week
A lot of interesting insights into breastfeeding here. Not something I had ever done extensive research or reading on. Dives into benefits of, as well as why it isn't always an option for mothers and babies.
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Pigs can breathe through "intestinal breathing" which does not use the lungs
My first question is why this was something that was found out, but apparently pigs can survive if they have air pumped up their, erm, well - into their intestines.
"It's so impressive because we never thought of breathing from the gut, but it's possible," Takanori Takebe, an author of the study and a doctor at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, told VICE World News.
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"The Bizarre Bird That’s Breaking the Tree of Life"
I'd never heard of a hoatzin until I came across this article. Then, while the article sit in my virtual "to read" pile, I saw a Twitter thread of discussion about it which only reaffirmed that I needed to read both it and then the thread.
When Stiller joined the project, her colleagues were combing through museums and laboratories to sample three hundred and sixty-three bird species, chosen carefully to represent the diversity of living birds. With help from four supercomputers in three different countries, they began to compare each bird’s DNA to figure out how they were related. “I think there was always this idea that, once we sequence full genomes, we will be able to solve it,” Stiller told me. But, early in the process, she encountered an evolutionary enigma called Opisthocomus hoazin. “I was completely amazed by this bird,” she said.
I thought this quote in the article was really interesting:
The hoatzin may be more than a missing piece of the evolutionary puzzle. It may be a sphinx with a riddle that many biologists are reluctant to consider: What if the pattern of evolution is not actually a tree?
As mentioned (and linked) above, here's the Twitter thread which should be read after the article that supports the author's premise:
In that thread, I particularly like this point, noting that many scientists aren't being beholden to 'Darwin's monument' (tree thinking):
To me, "Tree thinking" as the article and the Twitter thread discuss, is actually "Forest thinking" to accept that there might be multiple trees and that some trees might connect on various branches. But, I'm not a biologist, and given that this is hugely complex overall - even that might be problematically simplifying it.
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"‘Bees are really highly intelligent’: the insect IQ tests causing a buzz among scientists"
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Monarch butterfly numbers in Mexico rise by 35%
Monarch butterflies hold a special place in my heart. And it has honestly helped me today to hear this news.
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The secret world beneath our feet is mind-blowing – and the key to our planet’s future
[Auto Generated Summary]:
Bacteria, fungi, plants and soil animals, working unconsciously together, build an immeasurably intricate, endlessly ramifying architecture that, like Dust in a Philip Pullman novel, organises itself spontaneously into coherent worlds. "The idea is to let the plants put back at least as much carbon and minerals as we take out."Tolly tells me that "The green manure ties up nutrients, fixes nitrogen, adds carbon and enhances the diversity of the soil. The more plant species you sow, the more bacteria and fungi you encourage. Every plant has its own associations. Roots are the glue that holds and builds the soil biology."The other crucial innovation is to scatter over the green manure an average of one millimetre a year of chipped and composted wood, produced from his own trees or delivered by a local tree surgeon. As Tolly explains: "It isn't fertiliser; it's an inoculant that stimulates microbes. The carbon in the wood encourages the bacteria and fungi that bring the soil back to life." Tolly believes he's adding enough carbon to help the microbes build the soil, but not so much that they lock up nitrogen, which is what happens if you give them more than they need. If we can discover how to mediate and enhance the relationship between crop plants and bacteria and fungi in a wide range of soils and climates, it should be possible to raise yields while reducing inputs.
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New Whale Species Identified In Gulf Of Mexico
Came across this headline last night. I always am amazed when we find a new species of a mammal. Granted it seems this one is a close relative of another species, so it's possible we've seen it before and never realized it was different, but still. Now, hopefully we can save it from extinction.
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