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A Cure for Alzheimer’s?!
By Shlomo Maital
I’ve been closely tracking research on Alzheimer’s, as researchers try to identify the cause, diagnose the illness earlier and above all, find a possible cure. The photograph above shows just how awful an illness it is, literally shrinking and damaging our brain, messing up neural connections with ugly protein tangles, and damaging our lives and those of our loved ones who care for sufferers. By one estimate, there will be 75 million sufferers in 2030 and 135 million in 2050. So, Alzheimer’s must become a top priority for medical research.
On Wednesday a major new breakthrough by Harvard researchers was published in the journal Nature. Here is how the Boston Globe described it:
“… scientists identified a protein called REST that flips genes on and off and naturally increases during aging. REST, they found, represses genes involved in Alzheimer’s disease, and its levels are reduced in key brain areas of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or the mild cognitive impairment that precedes dementia. In laboratory tests, REST protected brain cells from dying when exposed to a number of stresses, including the beta amyloid protein that accumulates in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. … “What I love about this study, first and foremost, is it’s some good news for Alzheimer’s, and it connects that good news with an immediate therapeutic strategy,”Scripps Institute researcher Jeffrey Kelly said. “There aren’t a lot of steps between this” and the development of experimental drugs.”
The Harvard researchers took a new approach to Alzheimer’s, and found amazingly that there is a protein, created at birth, that can repress genes related to Alzheimer’s and other stresses. Alzheimer’s patients seem to have too little of it. The natural next step is to create a drug based on the REST protein.
I think there is an important, hidden point to be made here. Harvard Univ. has massive funds for research, flowing from its enormous endowment, and from other funding sources including those from industry. Modern research is very expensive. And availability of funds enables Harvard to attract and retain the very best research talent. There are still Nobel winners out there who succeed with little money and poor equipment. But that is becoming increasingly more difficult.
It’s Now a Fact! There WAS a Big Bang!
By Shlomo Maital
It is not often that a scientific discovery in astronomy hits the New York Times front pages. “Seeing back to the start of it all” (Tuesday March 18) reports that, “reaching back across 13.8 billion years..with telescopes at the South Pole, a team..led by John M. Kovac (Harvard-Smithsonian) detected …gravitational waves, the signature of a universe being wrenched violently apart when it was roughly a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old.”
The new finding that detected gravitational waves confirms a theory known as “inflation”, the theory that the expansion of space in the early universe happened at a rate much faster than the speed of light. Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a slower rate. “Inflation” is a theory expounded first by Dr. Alan Guth at Stanford, late at night in 1979. It was a “eureka” moment. “Spectacular realization!” Guth wrote then. Guth broke the physics rule, that the speed of light is an upper limit. What if it isn’t? he asked. And that led to a conceptual breakthrough, that on Monday, was confirmed.
The radio telescopes were sited at the South Pole, because the atmosphere is thinner there and there is far less background ‘noise’ to interfere.
How did human life happen? In one sentence: the Big Bang scattered hydrogen molecules, which clumped into stars, which exploded, scattering matter (formed in the belly of stars by fusing hydrogen atoms into heavier matter) which clumped into planets, and in soupy seas chemicals formed ribonucleic acid, then DNA, and a reptile that evolved from a single-cell creature went onto land and learned to breath air…and when a huge asteroid hit the earth and the resulting dust cloud obscured the sun, the cold-blooded dinosaurs all died, leaving the world to the mammals..and humans.
How arrogant are we humans? The Creator took 13.8 billion years to shape the universe as it is today. If those 13.8 b. years were represented as one year, 365 days, human life has existed for only the last 14 seconds of December 31, or, just about 50,000 years. So people – you are just the early early stage of an experiment, and alas, it just doesn’t seem to be working too well.
Senior Brain: ‘Googling’ Expands Your Mind – Honest!
By Shlomo Maital
An article in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry (Feb. 2009) by Small, Moody, Siddarth and Bookheimer, is titled “Your Brain on Google: Patterns of Cerebral Activation during Internet Searching”. It confirms something I personally have felt and believed – Google-ing is good for your brain and expands your mind.
First the experiment. The authors took 24 subjects, 12 of whom had minimal Internet search engine experience, and 12 of whom had extensive experience. Ages were 55 to 76 years. They used functional MRI scanning to study brain activity when subjects “performed a novel Internet search task, or a control task of reading text on a computer screen, formatted to simulate a printed book”. In both cases, the content was precisely matched.
Now, the results. “Internet searching may engage a greater extent of neural circuitry not activated while reading text pages, but only in people with prior computer and Internet search experience.” They conclude: “In older adults, prior experience with Internet searching may alter the brain’s responsiveness in neural circuits controlling decision making and complex reasoning”.
What this suggests is, perhaps, that Google-ing stuff is good for your brain. When you Google a subject, you scan through a large number of pages of material, fairly quickly, and your brain works hard to spot precisely what you need and what is relevant. And the more you do this, the better your brain gets at it – it’s a kind of exercise. It is a skill that is not developed when you simply read a printed page.
In general, modern technology clearly alters our brains. The way our children think, work and make decisions may become very different from the way we older-generation people think and decide. In fact, the differences already exist. Perhaps a good way for us Gen Senior to understand Gen Y is simply to make more use of the technology that they use.
Young Man, Young Woman: Go West! Go East! Just…Go!
By Shlomo Maital
Each year, New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof chooses an intern, to travel with him and report on ‘neglected issues’. This year’s winner? 20-year-old Nicole Sganga. In his column “Go west young people! And east!”, Kristof makes an interesting point.
First, a little joke. If ‘trilingual’ means knowing 3 languages, bilingual means knowing 2 – what is a person called who knows no foreign languages? Answer: an American. Most Americans do not have a passport, do not know a foreign language, and do not travel abroad. The result is an insular nation ignorant of geography and other cultures.
Kristof notes that of all the 50 American states, the most cosmopolitan, and the best state in which to do business (according to Forbes magazine) is…not New York! It is..Utah, the state with a large population of Mormons (Church of the Latter Day Saints), a religion not known for liberality. Why? Because young Mormons are required to do two years of missionary work in a foreign land, and they return speaking Thai, Mandarin, Korean and a blizzard of languages – 130 languages are spoken in commerce in Utah, as a result!
Kristof notes that fewer than 10 per cent of US college students study overseas during their undergraduate years.
In my country, Israel, young people complete their compulsory army service, then pack a backpack and trek through India, South America, Thailand, anywhere, partly to cleanse themselves of the early-rising army discipline. One result is to make Israel a very cosmopolitan nation, which I think helps our startups a lot.
Kristof suggests: How about if American colleges gave students a semester credit for a gap year spent in a non-English-speaking country?
America has paid heavily for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bungled in part because America had little understanding of the complex cultures of those nations, cultures you can understand only by living there and learning the language. So simply as a matter of survival, if America wants to understand this complex often hostile world, more young Americans need to experience other nations. It’s a matter of national security.
Obama – Bring the Money Home!
By Shlomo Maital
Two reports in today’s Bloomberg Business Week and Global New York Times are closely connected.
Floyd Norris reports that after six years of economic crisis and stagnation, the level of employment in the U.S. has at least returned to its level in 2008.
And Bloomberg reports that American businesses, which recovered far far faster than us ordinary working people, have piled up nearly 2 trillion dollars (!) in retained profits abroad, which they choose not to repatriate and bring home to America, in order to avoid the 35 per cent corporate income tax.
General Electric alone has $110 b. locked up abroad; Microsoft, 76.4 b.; Pfizer, $69 billion; Merck $57 billion; and Appel $54 billion. Overall, only 22 big companies hold half of the ‘locked earnings’ abroad, or $984 billion.
In the past, economic recoveries occur when businesses start investing again, in capital formation, using their retained earnings. But this cannot happen in America when businesses are sitting on their money abroad.
It’s not as if America doesn’t need investment. It needs infrastructure, new airports, fast trains (Amtrak’s ‘fast’ Boston to Washington train is a disgrace, compared to Japan’s and France’s bullet trains), new roads, new bridges, new schools, new factories…in short, everything.
So President Obama — why not declare an amnesty? Tell the giant businesses, if you bring your money home and use it – or even just bring it home, and make it available in capital markets for OTHERS to use it — we’ll offer you an Irish rate of tax, about 12 per cent, rather than the American one, 35 per cent. Do it because it makes good business sense, and besides, your country needs it – and it is your country that gave you the innovation and creativity that made you the profits in the first place.
It’s pretty likely the Republicans, who are pro-business, will support such an amnesty. And President Obama — after your dismal performance for six years, this may be your last chance to actually do something creative and productive. Do something for America’s workers. Renewed investment will create jobs more than anything. Until America’s businesses stop sitting on their piles of money abroad and start using it at home, employment cannot recover strongly.
Should We Teach Kids to Break the Rules?
By Shlomo Maital
Library Lion
In Michelle Knudsen’s book for children, “Library Lion”, 2006, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes, the head librarian Miss Merriweather and Mr. McBee kick Library Lion out of the library, because he roared. And in the library, the rule is, you have to keep silent. They come to realize that by sticking to the formal rules, McBee and Merriweather have made a mistake.
Sometimes, to do a good thing, you have to break the rules. An Israeli theater group has now made a musical out of this story.
Here is a short passage: One day a lion came to the library. He walked right past the circulation desk and up into the stacks. Mr. McBee ran down the hall to the head librarian’s office. “Miss Merriweather!” he called. “No running”, said Miss Merriweather, without looking up. “But there’s a lion!” said Mr. McBee. “In the library!” “Is he breaking any rules?” asked Miss Merriweather. She was very particular about rule breaking. “Well, no,” said Mr. McBee. “Not really”. “Then leave him be.”
As parents and teachers, we teach our kids to become ‘socialized’, which means, to learn the rules of civilized behavior in society. Every society socializes its kids. Without that, we would have a crumbling society of sociopaths.
The question is, if creativity and innovation are about breaking the rules, can we teach kids to follow some rules and break others? And can they learn to know the difference? Can we raise good kids, well behaved, who at the same time rebel against rules, unwritten ones, and create wonderful new inventions? Can you be totally socialized, and extremely creative?
Perhaps “Library Lion” is a wonderful start at grappling with these tough questions. It is clear that doing so is long overdue. A lot of parenting, and a great deal of schooling, are one-sidedly focused on teaching the rules, and not on when they might be, and should be, broken.
Innovation as Grave Robbing
By Shlomo Maital
Airlander: 80% Less Fuel
One way to innovate is to rob graves; find old ideas that failed, dig them up, revive them, spruce them up and make them work. The British firm Hybrid Air Vehicles has done just that! The future may lie with airships like Airlander.
On Thursday May 6, 1937, the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed, when it tried to dock with a mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey. There were 97 people on board. Of them, 35 passengers and crew were killed, and a ground crewman. The tragic scene was broadcast live on radio, with play-by-play by a distraught broadcaster, who broke down. The live account of the disaster spelled the end for hydrogen-filled airships. It traumatized air ship technology for decades.
Now, 77 years later, comes the revival. According to Matt McFarland, writing in the Washington Post, March 6, a British company bought a spy ship (helium blimp) built for the US Army, took it apart, shipped it to Britain, and is finding new uses for it. The Washington Post reports that “the Airlander is able to carry large payloads over long distances very efficiently. Hybrid Air Vehicles’ project to develop the technology further is being funded by a Government grant as well as private finance from individuals including Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of the band Iron Maiden.”
The company plans to build more of the airships; an Airlander costs about $40 million to build, and a version that could carry 55 tons would cost about $100 million. It is 300 feet in length, 60 feet longer than the biggest jets from Boeing and Airbus. It doesn’t need a runway to land. It has four diesel engines and is helium-filled. (Filling the Hindenburg with hydrogen, highly flammable and explosive, was simply engineering madness. Helium doesn’t burn). The Airlander sits about 20 people and can carry between 3,300 pounds and 11 tons. And it uses 80 per cent less fuel than a jet.
“ There is now a worldwide competition to develop cargo airships,” wrote Barry Prentice, a professor at the University of Manitoba in a recent paper. “The most important remaining barrier to a cargo airship industry is the lack of business confidence.”
The long-lived ghost of the Hindenburg still lives. But, look to see many more cargo airships filling the skies in future. Can YOU innovate by robbing a grave — reviving an old failed idea ready to emerge and save the world?
The Einstein Principle in Innovation: Make Time Variable!
By Shlomo Maital
The painter Salvador Dali once painted a famous portrayal of time, in the form of ‘rubber stopwatches’. It recalls Einstein’s breakthrough in relativity theory – in his theory of space and time, time is no longer a constant, but in fact slows as the speed of light is approached. Indeed, a space traveler moving at the speed of light would return to earth to find everybody much older than he or she.
This principle has now been used to revive television. A few years ago, everybody was eulogizing TV (Rest In Peace), with low quality programming jamming the cable airwaves and viewer ratings plummeting. Amazingly, TV has revived. According to David Carr, Media columnist for the New York Times, there is a blizzard of great new TV and cable series. Here are a few: Breaking Bad, Grey’s Anatomy (my own favorite), Nashville, The Walking Dead, House of Cards, Modern Family, Archer, True Detective, Game of Thrones, The Americans, Girls, Justified…and that’s just a start.
What happened!
Time changed. That is – that high-tech remote, with the red button now enables us to record and view later, or to access and view an entire season of 7 or 13 or 24 shows from a whole series at one swat. Time has become variable. That is, we no longer have to watch the program at the time slot allotted to it – often, in the past, the single most critical variable for a series’ success or failure. We can now watch a series whenever we wish.
There is a major lesson here. When you innovate, if you can shift the time at which a product is used, consumed or enjoyed, you can turn failure into success. So think carefully not only about your innovation but also about the forgotten question, ‘when’? When is it used? When do people want to use it? When CAN they use it? Can I widen the range of (time) choice?
Television is the proof of concept. Welcome back, TV. As David Carr sums up, “the idiot box has gained heft and intellectual credibility to the point where you seem dumb if you are not watching it. “ Wow, what a change.
Curing AIDS in New-born Infants: Breakthrough!
By Shlomo Maital
Few things are more tragic, and more unfair, than new-born infants born with AIDS, acquired from their mothers. I was stunned to learn that every year, 250,000 babies worldwide are born infected with the AIDS virus!
It is tough enough for many babies to make their way in the world, without the lifelong struggle with AIDS, starting at birth.
But a creative doctor may have found the answer.
According to a report in the New York Times, * “When scientists made the stunning announcement last year that a baby born with H.I.V. had apparently been cured through aggressive drug treatment just 30 hours after birth, there was immediate skepticism that the child had been infected in the first place. But on Wednesday, the existence of a second such baby was revealed at an AIDS conference here, leaving little doubt that the treatment works. A leading researcher said there might be five more such cases in Canada and three in South Africa. And a clinical trial in which up to 60 babies who are born infected will be put on drugs within 48 hours is set to begin soon, another researcher added. If that trial works — and it will take several years of following the babies to determine whether it has — the protocol for treating all 250,000 babies born infected each year worldwide will no doubt be rewritten. “This could lead to major changes, for two reasons,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, executive director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Both for the welfare of the child, and because it is a huge proof of concept that you can cure someone if you can treat them early enough.”
Let’s applaud Dr. Audra Deveikis. Here is how she made the breakthrough discovery: “ A baby girl born at Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach, Calif., is now 9 months old and apparently free of the virus that causes AIDS. Her mother, who has advanced AIDS and is mentally ill, arrived in labor; she had been prescribed drugs to protect her baby but had not taken them. Four hours after the birth, a pediatrician, Dr. Audra Deveikis, drew blood for an H.I.V. test and immediately started the baby on three drugs — AZT, 3TC and nevirapine — at the high doses usually used for treatment of the virus. The normal preventive regimen for newborns would be lower doses of two drugs; doctors usually do not use the more aggressive treatment until they are sure the baby is infected, and then sometimes not in the first weeks. “Of course I had worries,” Dr. Deveikis said in an interview here. “But the mother’s disease was not under control, and I had to weigh the risk of transmission against the toxicity of the meds.” “I’d heard of the Mississippi baby, I’d watched the video,” she added. “I knew that if you want to prevent infection, early treatment is critical.” The Long Beach baby is now in foster care, she said. The mother is still alive as well.
It may take some time. But perhaps, many of those 250,000 babies born to AIDS moms will be spared the illness, thanks to Dr. Deveikis.
Dr. Deveikis simply broke the rules, broke the protocol for treating AIDS babies – and may as a result have saved many lives. And of course, she read the literature and case studies.
Thanks, Dr. Deveikis! It took courage to defy the conventional protocol, and you may even have endangered your career in doing so. Perhaps one day you will get a Nobel Prize. I wonder why no other doctors thought simply to administer the large doses of anti-AIDS drugs to newborns at risk? I guess it’s really hard to think out of the box.
Profiles in Courage: How Kyla Montgomery Outruns MS
By Shlomo Maital
Kyla Montgomery
Meet Kyla Montgomery. She is one of America’s leading high school athletes in the mile race, a very difficult race that today is run almost at a sprint, for the whole four minute plus distance.
Kyla is a profile in courage. Three years ago, she was disgnosed with MS, multiple sclerosis, a disease in which the insulating covers of the nerve cells are damaged, making it hard for the nerves to send messages to the brain. It is a debilitating disease, that can be treated but as yet not cured.
Strangely, according to today’s New York Times (“Challenge like no other for runner with MS”, March 5), Kyla’s MS affliction gives her an advantage. She cannot feel the pain in her legs when she runs, and when you run the mile, the pain is quite severe, because it is a race that creates an oxygen debt in the muscles and naturally, they complain. But Kyla’s brain can’t hear the complaints from her leg muscles, because the nerves don’t transmit it. (The U.S. women’s high school record for the mile was recently broken, at 4:32! by a 16-year-old).
But there is a disadvantage too. She cannot stop. When she stops, at the end of the race, she collapses, as her legs simply give out. Her coach has to catch her and carry her. If she stumbles within the race, as she once did, she has trouble getting up. (She once crawled to a fence, pulled herself up to her feet – and dashed ahead, finishing 10th!). In one race, when officials forgot they had to catch her, she collapsed after finishing, right onto her face. Some ignorant people in the audience called her a ‘wimp’. She is quite the opposite.
When Kyla was diagnosed with MS, she told her coach that “I don’t know how much time I have left (to run, after being diagnosed with MS), so I want to run fast – don’t hold back!”. She improved her time from 24:29 for five kilometers, to 17:22 (yes, that’s just over 3 minutes per kilometer…).
Kyla was rejected by many universities’ sports programs. But finally, Lipscomb University in Tennessee saw the light. She won an athletic scholarship there, and will run for them. We wish her luck.
TIMnovate 