Some Bacteria May Promote Cancer

(p. A15) A mysterious bacterium found in up to half of all colon tumors also travels with the cancer as it spreads, researchers reported on Thursday [Nov. 23, 2017].
Whether the bacterium, called Fusobacterium nucleatum, actually plays a role in causing or spurring the growth of cancer is not known. But the new study, published in the journal Science, also shows that an antibiotic that squelches this organism slows the growth of cancer cells in mice.
Scientists are increasingly suspicious that there may be a link: another type of bacteria has been discovered in pancreatic cancer cells. In both types of cancer, most tumors host bacteria; however, only a small proportion of the cells in any single tumor are infected.
“The whole idea of bacteria in tumors is fascinating and unexpected,” said Dr. Bert Vogelstein, a colon cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins.
The colon cancer story began in 2011, when Dr. Matthew Meyerson of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Dr. Robert A. Holt of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia independently reported finding Fusobacteria, which normally inhabit the mouth, in human colon cancers.
That instigated a rush to confirm. Researchers around the world reported finding Fusobacteria in colon cancers, but their work only raised more questions. The new paper, by Dr. Meyerson and his colleagues, provides some answers.
. . .
Dr. Vogelstein suggests that instead of directly causing cancer, Fusobacteria might be altering patients’ immune response — and perhaps their response to treatments that use the immune system to destroy cancers.
Alternately, perhaps the bacteria are acting more directly by secreting chemicals that spur growth in nearby cancer cells, Dr. Relman said.
“It is not unreasonable to say Fusobacterium is promoting or contributing to colon cancer,” he said.
Are Fusobacteria guilty of causing cancer? If this were a criminal case, where the jury had to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, Dr. Meyerson said he would have to acquit.
But if it were a civil case, judged on the preponderance of the evidence, his vote would be different: Fusobacteria are guilty.

For the full story, see:
GINA KOLATA. “Study Suggests Bacteria Have Key Role in Cancer.” The New York Times (Sat., NOV. 25, 2017): A15.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 23, 2017, and has the title “Why Is This Bacterium Hiding in Human Tumors?”)

The Science article, discussed in the passages quoted above, is:
Bullman, Susan, Chandra S. Pedamallu, Ewa Sicinska, Thomas E. Clancy, Xiaoyang Zhang, Diana Cai, Donna Neuberg, Katherine Huang, Fatima Guevara, Timothy Nelson, Otari Chipashvili, Timothy Hagan, Mark Walker, Aruna Ramachandran, Begoña Diosdado, Garazi Serna, Nuria Mulet, Stefania Landolfi, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Roberta Fasani, Andrew J. Aguirre, Kimmie Ng, Elena Élez, Shuji Ogino, Josep Tabernero, Charles S. Fuchs, William C. Hahn, Paolo Nuciforo, and Matthew Meyerson. “Analysis of Fusobacterium Persistence and Antibiotic Response in Colorectal Cancer.” Science (posted online (ahead of publication) on Nov. 23, 2017).

FCC Spectrum Regulations Drive Innovators to Bankruptcy

(p. A17) In 2004 the FCC moved to relax L-Band rules, permitting deployment of a terrestrial mobile network. Satellite calls would continue, but few were being made, and sharing frequencies with cellular devices made eminent sense. By 2010, L-Band licensee LightSquared was ready to build a state-of-the-art 4G network, and the FCC announced that the 40 MHz bandwidth would become available. LightSquared quickly spent about $4 billion of its planned $14 billion infrastructure rollout. Americans would soon enjoy a fifth nationwide wireless choice.
But in 2012 the FCC yanked LightSquared’s licenses. Various interests, from commercial airlines to the Pentagon, complained that freeing up the L Band could cause interference with Global Positioning System devices, since they are tuned to adjacent frequencies. Yet cheap remedies–such as a gradual roll-out of new services while existing networks improved reception with better radio chips–were available. In reality, the costliest spectrum conflicts emanate from overprotecting old services at the expense of the new. With its licenses snatched away, LightSquared instantly plunged into bankruptcy.
. . .
. . . regulatory impediments continue to block progress. Years after the L-Band spectrum was slated for productive use in 4G, it lies fallow–now delaying upgrades to 5G.

For the full commentary, see:
Thomas W. Hazlett. “How Politics Stalls Wireless Innovation; The FCC unveiled its National Broadband Plan in 2010–but couldn’t stick to it.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Oct. 2, 2017): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 1, 2017.)

The commentary, quoted above, is related to the author’s book:
Hazlett, Thomas W. The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017.

Musk Fires Under-Performing Workers to Speed Output of Mass-Market Electric Sedans

(p. B4) DETROIT — The electric-car maker Tesla fired hundreds of workers this week after a series of performance reviews conducted during the biggest expansion in the company’s history.
Tesla said Friday [Oct. 13, 2017] that the dismissals were not out of the ordinary, even though they came as the automaker tries to increase the production of its first mass-market vehicle, the Model 3 sedan.
The company has been criticized for the slow pace of its early production of the new model, which has generated hundreds of thousands of deposits from prospective buyers.
Tesla built about 25,000 vehicles in the three months that ended Sept. 30, but only 260 of those were Model 3s — considerably fewer than the 1,500 it had projected. The automaker has attributed the low production rate of the new car to unexpected bottlenecks in its manufacturing system.

For the full story, see:
BILL VLASIC. “Tesla Fires Hundreds of Workers.” The New York Times (Sat., OCT. 14, 2017): B4.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 13, 2017, and has the title “Tesla Fires Hundreds as It Tries to Speed Production of an Electric Sedan.”)

Federal and State Mandates Constrain “Creativity in the Classroom”

(p. A11) Mrs. DeVos sees choice as a means to the end of promoting educational innovation–including within traditional public schools. “Instead of focusing on systems and buildings, we should be focused on individual students,” she says. That means encouraging young people “to pursue their curiosity and their interests, and being OK with wherever that takes them–not trying to conform them into a path that everybody has to take.”
What stands in the way? “I think a real robust defense of the status quo is the biggest impediment,” Mrs. DeVos says. She doesn’t mention teachers unions until I raise the subject, whereupon she observes: “I think that they have done a good job in continuing to advocate for their members, but I think it’s a focus more around the needs of adults” rather than students.
Many of the adults are frustrated, too. Recently I met a veteran middle-school teacher who said his creativity in the classroom has been increasingly constrained by federal and state mandates on curriculum and testing. Another teacher I know, who wants to start a charter, complains that “it is getting harder and harder to work for the idiots in traditional schools.”
That sounds familiar to Mrs. DeVos. “I do hear sentiments from many teachers like that,” she says, “and particularly from many teachers that are really effective and creative themselves. I’ve also heard from many teachers who have stopped teaching because they feel like they can’t really be free to do their best, because they’re either subtly or not subtly criticized by peers who might not be as effective as they are–or by administrators who don’t want to see them sort of excelling and upsetting the apple cart within whatever system they’re in.”
She continues: “I talked to a bunch of teachers that had left teaching that had been Teachers of the Year in their states or their counties or whatever. I recall one of the teachers said he just felt so beaten down after being told repeatedly to have his class keep it down–that they were having too much fun, and the kids were too engaged. Well, what kind of a message is that?”

For the full interview, see:
James Taranto, interviewer. “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW with Betsey DeVos; The Teachers Union’s Public Enemy No. 1.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 2, 2017): A11.
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date Sept. 1, 2017, and has the title “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; The Teachers Union’s Public Enemy No. 1.”)

Rate of Inflation Is Still a “Mystery” to Economists

(p. A2) CLEVELAND–Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Tuesday [Sept. 26, 2017] defended the central bank’s projection for a gradual path of rate increases over the next few years despite the past few months of unexpectedly low inflation.
. . .
Inflation, under the Fed’s preferred measure, has undershot the central bank’s 2% target for much of the past five years. Although Ms. Yellen said she expects inflation to gradually move up to the target, she acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding that prediction.
. . .
“How should policy be formulated in the face of such significant uncertainties? In my view, it strengthens the case for a gradual pace of adjustments,” Ms. Yellen told a National Association for Business Economics conference in Cleveland.
. . .
Still, the Fed’s understanding of inflation is “imperfect,” she said, calling the shortfall in inflation “a mystery.” “We recognize that something more persistent may be responsible for the current undershooting.”

For the full story, see:
David Harrison. “Yellen Firm on Rates; Inflation a ‘Mystery’.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Sept. 27, 2017): A2.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 26, 2017, and has the title “Yellen Defends Fed Rate-Rise Plan Despite ‘Mystery’ of Low Inflation.”)

“The Tabula Rasa of the American Dream”

(p. 22) The four Keats siblings, John and George, sister Fanny, and a third brother, “star crossed” Tom, dead of tuberculosis at 19, were all well schooled in the World of Pains. The orphaned children of a shiftless stable hand, they survived on the miserly dole of a tea merchant appointed their guardian. “The lives of these orphans,” Gigante remarks, “do have the makings of fairy tale.” John trained in medicine before taking up the far riskier profession of poetry; reviews of his ambitious long poem “Endymion” were so harsh that Byron cruelly joked he was “snuffed out by an article.” George limped along as a clerk in various mercantile firms, dreaming of something more ­adventurous.
Gigante has had the clever idea of telling the stories of John and George as parallel lives, a dual biography of brothers.
. . .
In her view, George’s departure to America with his young wife, Georgiana, was “an imaginative leap across 4,000 miles onto the tabula rasa of the American dream.” And yet, nothing — nothing, that is, beyond his famous brother — distinguishes George from thousands of other immigrants who joined in the Western migration during the tough years following the French Revolution, when it became painfully clear that possibilities for advancement in class-stratified Great Britain were severely curtailed.
. . .
The land of opportunity was also the land of crushing disappointment. On his second trip to America, after blowing his inheritance on a dubious investment with his elegant friend and neighbor Audubon, and retreating from the bleak prairies to more civilized Louisville, George finally completed his sawmill. (He would have been wiser to invest in Audubon’s pictures of otters and buzzards than a crackpot steamboat scheme.) After a few years of profit, when he built a columned mansion equipped with slaves near the center of town, George lost it all again in the Panic of 1837.

For the full review, see:
CHRISTOPHER BENFEY. “Ode to Siblings.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, October 16, 2011): 22.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date OCT. 14, 2011, and has the title “A Keats Brother on the American Frontier.”)

The book under review, is:
Gigante, Denise. The Keats Brothers: The Life of John and George. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.

More Cures If Local Physicians Can Conduct Clinical Trials

(p. A17) The good news is that technology innovations are moving us toward modern clinical trial designs. Electronic health records, now common in U.S. medical practices, allow physicians to collect timely and detailed data that could be used for exploring ways of bringing clinical research directly to patients. Those records are becoming the technological building blocks of a new research model based on real-world evidence, which aims to provide insights regarding the usage and potential benefits or risks of a drug by analyzing patient data collected as part of routine delivery of care.
Real-world evidence captures the experience of real-world patients, who are generally more diverse than the selective cohorts enrolled in clinical trials. Additionally, real-world data from electronic health records may be used after a drug’s approval to answer important questions about its use. Researchers can, for example, search through anonymized data from patients taking a specific cancer drug to see whether those with a certain tumor mutation respond better or worse than other patients. Such information could help doctors personalize therapies based on the patient’s genomic makeup.
Moving clinical research to a doctor’s office, the point of routine care, may also address the difficulties patients and doctors face with off-label drugs. If local physicians can participate in conducting real-world randomized clinical trials in their own practices, new uses of approved drugs could be carefully studied, potentially generating evidence supporting approval of a new use. Real-world clinical trials could also limit disruptions to patients’ lives by reducing the need for long-distance travel.

For the full commentary, see:
Amy Abernethy and Sean Khozin. “Clinical Drug Trials May Be Coming to Your Doctor’s Office; Electronic medical records make possible a new research model based on real-world evidence.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Sept. 13, 2017): A17.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 12, 2017.)

“The Oppressive Communality” of Open Floor Plans

(p. D1) These days, people are taking another look at developing basements or attics as getaway bonus spaces to ensure family peace. As the idea of the open-plan home–the combination kitchen, living and dining room that’s long dominated residential layouts–has aged, it’s revealed its flaws. When parents are relentlessly texting children all day and then corralling the whole family into a single living space all night, there’s no escaping each other, and nerves can fray.
. . .
(p. D2) The oppressive communality of the open plan has fueled the backlash, as has constant connectedness. Jen Altman, a child family psychologist of 17 years, sees the pendulum beginning to swing away from helicopter parenting. These days, she hears parents howl versions of “I just need 10 minutes to myself.”
“I’ve always thought that aloneness and separation are as vital to development as attachment and connection,” said Dr. Altman, who practices in Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J.
. . .
“It’s hard to get away from the open plan because of the way we live,” she said. “It’s the space where everyone congregates–meals are prepared, kids do their homework.” But she found herself seeking respite in the detached room–“sort of an at-home getaway,” she said. Though bright bands of colored paint ring the walls, “the space never reads ‘playroom,'” she said, thanks to a floor of black rocks and shells, and a muted Oriental rug. After Ms. Vidal moved in her beloved midcentury Heywood Wakefield vanity, her design books and mementos made the space hers.
“It’s a bit of separation from being on top of one another,” she said of the room. “It helps me focus.”

For the full story, see:
Elizabeth Anne Hartman. “Hideaway We Go.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 19, 2017): D1-D2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 17, 2017, and has the title “The Open-Floor-Plan Backlash: How Family Members Are Escaping Each Other.”)

Nursing Unions “Keep Aides from Encroaching on Their Turf”

(p. B2) There are a few reasons long-term care is such a bad job. “Most people see it as glorified babysitting,” said Robert Espinoza, vice president for policy at PHI, an advocacy group for personal care workers that also develops advanced training curriculums to improve the quality of the work force.
The fact that most workers are immigrant women does not help the occupation’s status. Occupational rules that reserve even simple tasks for nurses, like delivering an insulin shot or even putting drops into a patient’s eye, also act as a barrier against providing care workers with better training.
. . .
. . . there are the powerful nursing unions, ready to fight tooth and nail to keep aides from encroaching on their turf. Carol Raphael, former chief executive of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the largest home health agency in the United States, told Professor Osterman that when the association tried to expand the role of home-care aides, the “nurses went bonkers.”

For the full commentary, see:
Porter, Eduardo. “ECONOMIC SCENE; Rethinking Home Health Care as a Path to the Middle Class.” The New York Times (Weds., AUG. 30, 2017): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date AUG. 29, 2017, and has the title “ECONOMIC SCENE; Home Health Care: Shouldn’t It Be Work Worth Doing?”)

Monkeys Want More Information

(p. 13) In his book “The Compass of Pleasure,” the Johns Hopkins neurobiologist David J. Linden explicates the workings of these regions, known collectively as the reward system, elegantly drawing on sources ranging from personal experience to studies of brain activity to experiments with molecules and genes. . . ,
. . . the biggest surprise, and the one most relevant to current debates, is a “revolutionary” experiment Linden discusses near the end of his book. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health gave thirsty monkeys the option of looking at either of two visual symbols. No matter which they moved their eyes to, a few seconds later the monkeys would receive a random amount of water. But looking at one of the symbols caused the animals to receive an extra cue that indicated how big the reward would be. The monkeys learned to prefer that symbol, which differed from the other only by providing a tiny amount of information they did not already have. And the same dopamine neurons that initially fired only in anticipation of water quickly learned to fire as soon as the information-providing symbol became visible. “The monkeys (and presumably humans as well) are getting a pleasure buzz from the information itself,” Linden writes.

For the full review, see:
CHRISTOPHER F. CHABRIS. “Think Again.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, October 16, 2011): 12-13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date OCT. 14, 2011, and has the title “Is the Brain Good at What It Does?”)

The book under review, is:
Linden, David J. The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. New York: Viking Adult, 2011.

Soviets Expelled Math Innovator from High School, When He Denied That Dostoyevsky Was Pro-Communist

(p. A12) Vladimir Voevodsky, formerly a gifted but restless student who flunked out of college out of boredom before emerging as one of the most brilliant and revolutionary mathematicians of his generation, died on Sept. 30 [2017] at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 51.
. . .
Vladimir was kicked out of high school three times, once for disagreeing with his teacher’s assertion that Dostoyevsky, who died in 1881, was pro-Communist. He was also kicked out of Moscow University after failing academically, having stopped attending classes that he considered a waste of time.
. . .
How do mathematicians know that something they prove is actually true?
This question became urgent for him as mathematicians were discovering — sometimes decades after publication — that proof after proof, including one of his own, had critical flaws.
Mathematical arguments had gotten so complicated, he realized, that other mathematicians rarely checked them in detail. And his stellar reputation only made the problem worse: Everyone assumed that his proofs must be right.
Dr. Voevodsky realized that human brains could not keep up with the ever-increasing complexity of mathematics. Computers were the only solution. So he embarked on an enormous project to create proof-checking software so powerful and convenient that mathematicians could someday use it as part of their ordinary work and create a library of rock-solid mathematical knowledge that anyone in the world could access.
Computer scientists had worked on the problem for decades, but it was territory only a few mathematicians had ever ventured into. “Among mathematicians, computer proof verification was almost a forbidden subject,” Dr. Voevodsky wrote.
The problem was that these systems were extraordinarily cumbersome. Checking a single theorem could require a decade of work, because the computer essentially had to be taught all of the mathematics a proof was built on, in agonizing, inhuman detail. Ordinary mathematicians intent on expanding the borders of the field could not possibly devote that kind of effort to checking their proofs.
Somehow, computers and humans needed to be taught to think alike.
Dr. Voevodsky developed a stunningly bold plan for how to do so: He reformulated mathematics from its very foundation, giving it a new “constitution,” as Dr. Hales put it. Mathematics so reformulated would be far friendlier to computers and allow mathematicians to talk to computers in a language that was much closer to how mathematicians ordinarily think.
Today, Dr. Voevodsky declared in 2014, “computer verification of proofs, and of mathematical reasoning in general, looks completely practical.”

For the full obituary, see:
JULIE REHMEYER. “Vladimir Voevodsky, Dropout Turned Revolutionary Mathematician, Dies at 51.” The New York Times (Sat., OCT. 7, 2017): A12.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date OCT. 6, 2017, and has the title “Vladimir Voevodsky, Revolutionary Mathematician, Dies at 51.”)