Author: Art Diamond

Entrepreneurial Bystander Identifies Stranger’s Cancerous Mole and Saves His Life

(p. B9) Nadia Popovici kept shifting her eyes from the hockey game to the back of Brian Hamilton’s neck.

Mr. Hamilton, an assistant equipment manager for the Vancouver Canucks, had a small mole there. It measured about two centimeters and was irregularly shaped and red-brown in color — possible characteristics of a cancerous mole, signs that Ms. Popovici had learned to spot while volunteering at hospitals as a nursing assistant.

Maybe he already knew? But if so, why was the mole still there? She concluded that Mr. Hamilton did not know.

“I need to tell him,” Ms. Popovici, 22, told her parents at the Oct. 23 [2021] N.H.L. game between the Canucks and the Seattle Kraken at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.

Ms. Popovici typed a message on her phone and waited for the game to end. After waving several times, she finally drew Mr. Hamilton’s attention, and placed her phone against the plexiglass.

“The mole on the back of your neck is possibly cancerous. Please go see a doctor!” the message read, with the words “mole,” “cancer” and “doctor” colored bright red.

Mr. Hamilton said he looked at the message, rubbed the back of his neck and kept walking, thinking, “Well, that’s weird.”

. . .

Indeed, Ms. Popovici was correct, and she had just saved his life.

. . .

Specifically, doctors later told him, it was type-2 malignant melanoma, a type of skin cancer that, because it was detected early, could be easily removed and treated.

For the full story, see:

Eduardo Medina. “Discovering Cancerous Mole From Stands, She Saves a Life.” The New York Times (Tuesday, January 4, 2022): B9.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 4, 2022, and has the title “Hockey Fan Spots Cancerous Mole at Game and Delivers a Lifesaving Note.”)

Rational Environmentalism Takes Account of Costs of Climate Regulations

Source of graph: online version of WSJ article cited below, based on Nordhaus model.

(p. A19) The U.N. estimates that even if no country does anything to slow global warming, the annual damage by 2100 will be equivalent to a 2.6% cut in global gross domestic product. Given that the U.N. also expects the average person to be 450% as rich in 2100 as today, that figure falls only to 434% if the temperature rises unimpeded. This is a problem, but not the end of the world.

That means we don’t have to panic but instead can decide policy rationally. Economist William Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for his work on effective climate solutions, and the chart nearby shows the outcome of his model to find the optimal climate policy. His crucial point is that the damage global warming inflicts aren’t the only costly part of climate change; climate policies also create significant economic harm. Since we have to pay both costs, his model aims to minimize their sum.

. . .

That model shows that the optimal policy mix would be one that slows the average temperature’s rise so that by 2100 it only reaches 6.3 degrees. That’s the option that minimizes the total damages from climate change and climate policies.

. . .

. . . carbon taxes aren’t the only smart way to ameliorate climate change. There are two other effective solutions.

The first is innovation. If research could drive the cost of one source of clean energy below that of fossil fuels, consumers would switch with no prompting.

. . .

The second is economic growth. Just about every problem, including the dangers of global warming, are easier to deal with when people are more prosperous.

For the full commentary, see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “A Reasonable Alternative to Preaching Climate Doom.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Nov. 11, 2021): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated November 10, 2021, and has the title “A Reasonable Alternative to COP26 and Preaching Climate Doom.”)

The survey mentioned above is reported in detail in:

Association, American Psychological. “Stress in America™ 2021: Stress and Decision-Making During the Pandemic.” Washington, D.C., 2021.

“Intolerance Leads Not to Progress, but Stagnation”

(p. C10) . . . this past year I revisited the works of Friedrich Hayek, the great 20th-century expositor of classical liberalism. His most sweeping work is “The Constitution of Liberty”—a legal history as much as a defense of freedom—which includes a timely case for tolerance. We cannot foresee the particulars of human progress, which means “we shall never get the benefits of freedom, never obtain those unforeseeable developments for which it provides the opportunity,” if freedom “is not also granted where the uses made of it by some do not seem desirable.” Thus intolerance leads not to progress, but stagnation.

For the full review, see:

Raymond Kethledge. “12 Months of Reading; Raymond Kethledge.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021): C10.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 10, 2021, and has the title “Who Read What: Business Leaders Share Their Favorite Books of 2021.”)

The book praised by Kethledge is:

Hayek, Friedrich A. The Constitution of Liberty. Reprint ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

During Pandemic, Conditions and Information Constantly Change, Making Decision-Making Stressful and Exhausting

(p. A14) What should you wear today? What to eat for lunch? If life’s daily questions are getting harder to answer nearly two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, you aren’t alone, according to a new survey.

The survey, conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association, found that 32% of American adults were sometimes so stressed about the pandemic that making basic decisions was tough.

. . .

“For many, the pandemic has imposed the need for constant risk assessment, with routines upended and once trivial tasks recast,” the study said. “When the factors influencing a person’s decisions are constantly changing, no decision is routine. And this is proving to be exhausting.”

For the full story, see:

Allison Prang. “Can’t Decide? It Could Be Pandemic Stress.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Oct. 27, 2021): A14.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Oct. 26, 2021, and has the title “Can’t Decide What to Wear? It May Be Pandemic Stress.”)

The survey mentioned above is reported in detail in:

Association, American Psychological. “Stress in America™ 2021: Stress and Decision-Making During the Pandemic.” Washington, D.C., 2021.

UNO Center Study Finds “Vast Majority” of Jan. 6th Rioters “Were Not Affiliated with Organized Groups”

Nice photo of Gina Ligon, director of NCITE, in Mammel Hall blocking our view of Jun Kaneko’s “Mr. Papercliphead” sculpture (my name for it, not Kaneko’s). (Source of photo: Omaha World-Herald article quoted below.)

(p. A3) UNO’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (known by the acronym NCITE) was less than a year old when rioters bearing banners of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol as Congress certified Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. But it has given new focus to the work of NCITE, which was established in 2020 with a 10-year, $36.5 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security to be the agency’s research hub.

“I’ve never seen so many resources and such consistent energy toward understanding the domestic terror threat,” said Gina Ligon, the center’s director. “(The Jan. 6 attack) has made what we’re doing more urgent.”

. . .

“My first thought was that it was this organized, top-down militia that got everyone spun up,” Ligon said.

That’s not the way it turned out.

A study released last week by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism — part of the NCITE consortium — showed that just 11% of those arrested so far were members of known extremist organizations.

“The vast majority were not affiliated with organized groups,” said Seamus Hughes, the program’s deputy director.

The study also dismissed any notion that large numbers of rioters were down-and-out “skinheads” associated with past far-right groups.

Instead, the analysts found a diverse group ranging in age from 18 to 80, representing 350 counties in 45 states. Most (87%) are male, and most had jobs. There were business owners, real estate agents, a yoga instructor, a state legislator and even a musical theater actor.

Although some press attention has focused on the arrest of current or former military service members, only 11% had ties to the military.

For the full story, see:

Steve Liewer. “UNO Experts Find Surprises in Capitol Riot Arrest Data.” Omaha World-Herald (Monday, Jan. 10, 2022): A3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 13, 2022, and has the title “UNO Counterterrorism Experts Find Surprises in Capitol Riot Arrest Data.”)

China’s “Surveillance State” Is “the Perfect Rendition of George Orwell’s 1984”

(p. C13) Kai Strittmatter, the author of “We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State,” lived in China first as a student and then as a journalist. Full of interesting anecdotes, his book vividly depicts China as the perfect rendition of George Orwell’s “1984” via its implementation of “Smart Cities,” where surveillance cameras and AI algorithms watch and modify every citizen’s every action.  . . .   If we let China run the world, we may all be harmonized.

For the full review, see:

Desmond Shum. “12 Months of Reading; Desmond Shum.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021): C13.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 10, 2021, and has the title “Who Read What: Business Leaders Share Their Favorite Books of 2021.”)

The book praised by Shum is:

Strittmatter, Kai. We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State. New York: Custom House, 2020.

At the University of Austin, the Intellectually Diverse Will Discuss, Rather Than Censor, “Provocative Questions”

(p. A16) A group of scholars and activists are planning to establish a new university dedicated to free speech, alarmed, they said, “by the illiberalism and censoriousness prevalent in America’s most prestigious universities.”

The university, to be known as the University of Austin, or UATX for short, will have a soft start next summer with “Forbidden Courses,” a noncredit program that its founders say will offer a “spirited discussion about the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.”

The university then plans to expand to master’s programs and, in several years, to undergraduate courses.

. . .

The prospective university’s board of advisers features some of the most prominent iconoclasts in the country, including Lawrence H. Summers, the former Harvard president; Steven Pinker, a Harvard linguist and psychologist; David Mamet, the playwright; and Glenn Loury, an economist at Brown.

. . .

“I think new models for a university are important,” Dr. Pinker said, “because current universities are locked into a strange business model: exorbitant tuition, a mushrooming bureaucracy, and obscure admissions policies that are neither meritocratic nor egalitarian, combined with plummeting intellectual diversity and tolerance for open inquiry (which is, after all, a university’s raison d’être).”

For the full story, see:

Anemona Hartocollis. “Organizers Plan New University They Say Will Defend Free Speech.” The New York Times (Tuesday, November 9, 2021): A16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 8, 2021, and has the title “They Say Colleges Are Censorious. So They Are Starting a New One.”)

Louise Slade Was “Well Compensated” for Her Role in 47 Kraft Patents

(p. B7) Louise Slade, a groundbreaking food scientist whose work you can thank for soft-from-the-freezer ice cream, extra-chewy cookies and potato chips that retain their satisfying crunch despite being baked and not fried, died on Oct. 7 [2021] in Morristown, N.J.

. . .

It has been said that cooking is an art but baking is a science, and perhaps no one understood that adage better than Dr. Slade, whose research focused on how to keep dough, bread, cookies and crackers tasting delicious even after weeks on a grocery store shelf.

. . .

Dr. Slade’s great insight, which she developed over some 25 years as a scientist at General Foods and Kraft, was to consider food not as a combination of discrete ingredients but as a system of interacting molecules. By understanding those interactions, one could build predictive models for how, for example, to tweak a bread recipe to make it stay fresh longer without chemical preservatives.

“She was the only person I knew who could swim among the molecules and understand them at their most fundamental level,” Hamed Faridi, the executive director of the McCormick Science Institute, said in an interview. “Her strength was her impressive knowledge of how those molecules interact to create flavor and texture.”

. . .

“A lot of what Louise established was how to make products consistent and stable without putting in a lot of additives consumers don’t want,” Todd Abraham, who worked with Dr. Slade at Kraft, said in an interview.

Dr. Slade provided not just a framework for answering those challenges but also a voluminous amount of research: She and Dr. Levine, who worked together for much of their professional careers, published some 260 papers and received 47 patents. She once estimated that the patents she received for her corporate employers were worth more than $1 billion.

. . .

She also began to work with the Monell Chemical Senses Center, an independent research institution in Philadelphia that studies taste and smell; she eventually joined its board.

Personally frugal and well compensated for her corporate work, Dr. Slade became one of Monell’s chief donors, giving more than $2 million in her lifetime, Dr. Gary Beauchamp, the center’s emeritus director, said.

For the full obituary, see:

Clay Risen. “Louise Slade, Scientist Who Ensured Your Goodies Stay Good, Is Dead at 74.” The New York Times (Monday, November 1, 2021): B7.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Nov. 1, 2021, and has the title “Louise Slade, Scientist Who Studied the Molecules in Food, Dies at 74.”)

Pharmaceutical Entrepreneur Solomon Got Rich by Finding a Drug to Help His Son

(p. A19) Howard Solomon was building the pharmaceutical company Forest Laboratories, not by manufacturing drugs but by licensing them. In his search for deals in the United States and Europe, he learned about citalopram, a Danish antidepressant. He did not license it, though, believing the U.S. market was saturated with drugs to treat depression.

Then, in 1994, a family crisis intervened: His older son, the writer Andrew Solomon, had fallen into a deep depression. Mr. Solomon moved Andrew into his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and took weeks off from work to take care of him; . . . .

. . .

After two types of antidepressants were unable to help Andrew, a third did. His experience persuaded his father to make the deal a few years later for citalopram, which, under the name Celexa, became a billion-dollar drug for Forest Labs in the class of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, along with Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil.

. . .

Forest Labs was transformed by licensing Celexa from H. Lundbeck, the Danish company that developed it. But Lundbeck’s chief executive, Erik Sprunk-Jansen, was initially reluctant to speak to Mr. Solomon because licensing deals with some other U.S. companies had unraveled.

“Howard flew to Denmark to meet with him,” Phil Satow, a former executive vice president of Forest Labs, said in a phone interview. “Both were lovers of ballet, which became the common chord between them, and they developed a strong relationship.”

Celexa’s sales grew quickly, peaking at nearly $1.5 billion in 2003. Forest Labs then licensed Lexapro, an upgraded version of Celexa, which first reached $2 billion in sales in 2007.

. . .

His desire to work into his 80s was, he said, inspired by the example of Giuseppe Verdi.

“Growing up, he’d talk about Verdi writing ‘Falstaff’ in his 80s,” Andrew Solomon said. “‘Imagine that,’ he’d say, ‘in his 80s, he wrote some of the greatest music ever written.’ That was the path he hoped to follow.”

For the full obituary, see:

Richard Sandomir. “Howard Solomon, 94, Whose Business Feats Were Personal, Is Dead.” The New York Times (Wednesday, January 19, 2022): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Jan. 18, 2022, and has the title “Howard Solomon, 94, Dies; His Business Success Had a Personal Connection.”)

Research on Robust Bacteria Immune System, Serendipitously Led to CRSPR Gene-Editing

(p. C8) The author of “The Secret Body,” Daniel M. Davis, is another immunologist by trade.

. . .

Mr. Davis tells us how advances in microscopy have revealed unexpected structures inside human cells, and describes how efforts to map every cell type in the body have turned up a previously unknown tracheal cell that may be pivotal in understanding cystic fibrosis. The daunting structural complexity of the human brain, however, has thus far frustrated attempts to map out even minuscule portions of it.

A recurring theme in “The Secret Body” is “how a discovery of great medical significance [may begin] with relatively obscure research.” Recently, researchers found that bacteria boast a surprisingly robust immune system, which resists viral infection by attacking an intruding virus’s genes. Part of this system, the CRISPR complex, can be used to edit the genomes of human cells, even to tinker with the genetic makeup of embryos.

For the full review, see:

John J. Ross. “The Battle Inside Your Body.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021): C8.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 10, 2021, and has the title “The Defenders: Three Books on the Science of Immunity.”)

The book under review in the passages quoted above is:

Davis, Daniel M. The Secret Body: How the New Science of the Human Body Is Changing the Way We Live. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021.