09.03.10

Thoughts on the Anthropocene Extinction

Posted in Biology, Ideas, Sociology at 3:26 pm by Michael

While it is true that humanity is killing off species at an alarming rate, I don’t think this trend will continue indefinitely. The previous mass extinctions were driven (or at least initiated) for the most part by external events to the ecosystem, with reductions in the sustaining energy of the ecosystem and other consequences lasting for millions of years.

The rate at which we destroy ecosystems, on the other hand, is kept in check by our own population. Unless we pass some dire tipping point and cause the destruction to spiral out of our control, we will eventually hit a population limit, beyond which the planet can’t sustain us. It’s possible that we have already passed this limit; in that case, much like the current recession was caused because people borrowed money that didn’t actually exist and corrected by a return to the amount of real money left in the economy, the human population will be forced to decline, either through some sort of saturated-ecology problem (hunger is a big one; war could also be considered a limiting factor when resources become scarce) or simply through lower birth rates. Either way, the current mass extinction will not be as dire as the previous ones because, even at a faster rate of extinction, it will last for a much shorter period of time.

If I’m wrong and Earth becomes an ecumenopolis, it would instead bode well for humanity’s continuous expansion to other planets and we would nevertheless have the room to save what species remained extant.

…Barring a runaway process which takes matters entirely out of our hands. Watch those greenhouse gases!

08.23.10

Possible factor toward all-cause mortality reduction with vitamin D intake

Posted in Biology, Ideas at 12:04 am by Michael

One of the all-cause mortality reductions of vitamin D may stem from the fact that it is synthesized from a cholesterol precursor, thus removing it from the bloodstream. Supplementing would not have this benefit.

This hypothesis is testable by following a group of sunlight-synthesized vitamin D patients and comparing them against a group which receives less sunlight exposure and supplements the difference.

08.15.10

Treating the toxin rather than the bacterium which produces it.

Posted in Biology, Ideas at 11:29 pm by Michael

One treatment which would probably be fairly effective to counteract an infection with an antibiotic-resistant bacterium which causes symptoms by secreting a toxin (such as pathogenic E. Coli which releases a Shiga toxin) is to induce an immune response (via immunoglobulin) against the toxin rather than the bacterium for the duration of the traditional symptomatic period. This should alleviate the symptoms as long as treatment is followed, and when the treatment ends the underlying infection will have been fought off by the immune system. Thus patients would be technically infected (and infectious) but would not exhibit symptoms caused by the toxin.

Here’s a study which demonstrates that it is possible to induce an immune response against the Shiga toxin in mice:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC321607/

08.10.10

Seeding localized immunosuppressants

Posted in Biology, Ideas at 9:29 pm by Michael

I’ve been thinking of ways to produce long-term localized immunosuppression recently in order to help people with autoimmune diseases. What I’ve dreamed up this time is a device similar to a radioactive “seed” used for prostate cancer, but delivering an inhibitor of cellular signaling (take your pick of interleukins) in direct response to a high concentration of inflammatory cytokines. By carefully controlling the dose in response to environmental conditions, it should be possible to produce a strong localized immunosuppressive response without too much of the drug entering systemic circulation.

Corticosteroids aren’t an option – one challenge is to find something that can be used long-term with few side effects.

06.07.10

Idea: An Intuitive Role For Sleep

Posted in Biology, Ideas at 9:42 pm by Michael

Here’s my hypothesis: Similar to illness behavior, it prevents you from hunting when conditions are unfavorable to you. Dreams allow simulations of threatening events instead. Fasting long enough overrides the clock (it does; you can change your circadian rhythm by hours at a time by selectively fasting); eventually the need for energy outweighs the risk of hunting at night.

01.09.10

Data Classification Based on the Immune System

Posted in Biology, Ideas, Research at 4:55 pm by Michael

Idea: a data classification metamodel based on the immune system: train a small bag of classifiers and clone the ones that perform well, but with a small chance of random mutations to the hyperparameters. Weight classifiers created in this manner exponentially based on iterations since last correct classification. Keep a “memory threshold” below which the weight will not fall in case that pattern is encountered again.

10.26.09

Immunoclustering

Posted in Biology, Ideas at 7:01 pm by Michael

The concept of original antigenic sin is something that can be simulated using data clustering.

08.25.09

Microbiological Honeypots

Posted in Biology, Ideas at 5:12 pm by Michael

Neat idea on the way home: wouldn’t it be nifty to “catch” pathogens as they infect the body by advertising “I am a cell ready for infection” (bet there are marker proteins for that), then perform the bait and switch on them as they make their move, walling them away and exposing them to the immune system as a form of proactive, adaptive, and needle-less vaccine?

04.15.09

Relations between diseases

Posted in Biology, Ideas at 6:02 pm by Michael

It’s important to observe commonalities in presentation, symptoms, causes, or treatment responses of various diseases, as these may suggest a common etiology. For instance, trigeminal neuralgia and cluster headaches both present with extreme pain, short frequent attacks separated by periods of remission, and autonomic symptoms (such as lacrimation and Horner’s syndrome). These diseases should be compared and effective treatments for one studied on the other.

04.02.09

Making the immune system forget?

Posted in Biology, Ideas at 8:14 pm by Michael

The most severe autoimmune diseases seem to result from an inappropriate immunological memory response against self tissue. Is there some way to make the immune system forget? Selective, specific immunomodulation seems like it could be promising for a very wide range of diseases, cancer, MS, and SLE among them.

I think I just found the branch of medicine I want to study.

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