Gates Foundation Funding “Second Green Revolution”

(p. A12) URBANA, Ill. — A decade ago, agricultural scientists at the University of Illinois suggested a bold approach to improve the food supply: tinker with photosynthesis, the chemical reaction powering nearly all life on Earth.
The idea was greeted skeptically in scientific circles and ignored by funding agencies. But one outfit with deep pockets, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, eventually paid attention, hoping the research might help alleviate global poverty.
Now, after several years of work funded by the foundation, the scientists are reporting a remarkable result.
Using genetic engineering techniques to alter photosynthesis, they increased the productivity of a test plant — tobacco — by as much as 20 percent, they said Thursday[November 17, 2016] in a study published by the journal Science. That is a huge number, given that plant breeders struggle to eke out gains of 1 or 2 percent with more conventional approaches.
The scientists have no interest in increasing the production of tobacco; their plan is to try the same alterations in food crops, and one of the leaders of the work believes production gains of 50 percent or more may ultimately be achievable. If that prediction is borne out in further research — it could take a decade, if not longer, to know for sure — the result might be nothing less than a transformation of global agriculture.
. . .
“We’re here because we want to alleviate poverty,” said Katherine Kahn, the officer at the Gates Foundation overseeing the grant for the Illinois research. “What is it (p. A24) the farmers need, and how can we help them get there?”
One of the leaders of the research, Stephen P. Long, a crop scientist who holds appointments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at Lancaster University in England, emphasized in an interview that a long road lay ahead before any results from the work might reach farmers’ fields.
But Dr. Long is also convinced that genetic engineering could ultimately lead to what he called a “second Green Revolution” that would produce huge gains in food production, like the original Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which transferred advanced agricultural techniques to some developing countries and led to reductions in world hunger.
. . .
The work is, in part, an effort to secure the food supply against the possible effects of future climate change. If rising global temperatures cut the production of food, human society could be destabilized, but more efficient crop plants could potentially make the food system more resilient, Dr. Long said.

For the full story, see:
JUSTIN GILLIS. “Taking Aim at Hunger, By Altering Plant Genes.” The New York Times (Fri., NOV. 18, 2016): A12 & A24.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 17, 2016, and has the title “With an Eye on Hunger, Scientists See Promise in Genetic Tinkering of Plants.”)

The Science article co-authored by Long, that is mentioned above, is:
Kromdijk, Johannes, Katarzyna Głowacka, Lauriebeth Leonelli, Stéphane T. Gabilly, Masakazu Iwai, Krishna K. Niyogi, and Stephen P. Long. “Improving Photosynthesis and Crop Productivity by Accelerating Recovery from Photoprotection.” Science 354, no. 6314 (Nov. 18, 2016): 857-61.

Prehistoric Hunter Suffered from Ulcer-Causing Microbe

(p. A7) Microbes that once troubled the stomach of a prehistoric hunter known as “Otzi the Iceman,” who died on an Alpine glacier 5,300 years ago, are offering researchers a rare insight into the early settlement of Europe.
In findings reported Thursday [January 7, 2016] in Science, an international research group analyzed remnants of ulcer-causing microbes called Helicobacter pylori exhumed from the well-preserved mummy of the Neolithic nomad. With modern DNA sequencing technology, they reconstructed the genetic structure of this ancient microbe–the oldest known pathogen sequenced so far.
. . .
“We know he had a rough lifestyle,” said Frank Maixner at the European Academy Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, who led the team of 23 scientists. “We found a lot of pathological conditions.”
. . .
The researchers also determined that the bacteria had inflamed his stomach lining, indicating that the prehistoric hunter, fleeing into the icy highlands where he was shot in the back with an arrow and beaten, may have been feeling ill on the day he was murdered.

For the full story, see:
ROBERT LEE HOTZ. “Iceman’s Gut Sheds Light on Human Migration.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Jan. 8, 2016): A7.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 7, 2016, and has the title “Otzi the Iceman’s Stomach Sheds Light on Copper-Age Migration to Europe.”)

The research summarized in the passages quoted above, was more fully reported in:
Maixner, Frank, Ben Krause-Kyora, Dmitrij Turaev, Alexander Herbig, Michael R. Hoopmann, Janice L. Hallows, Ulrike Kusebauch, Eduard Egarter Vigl, Peter Malfertheiner, Francis Megraud, Niall O’Sullivan, Giovanna Cipollini, Valentina Coia, Marco Samadelli, Lars Engstrand, Bodo Linz, Robert L. Moritz, Rudolf Grimm, Johannes Krause, Almut Nebel, Yoshan Moodley, Thomas Rattei, and Albert Zink. “The 5300-Year-Old Helicobacter pylori Genome of the Iceman.” Science 351, no. 6269 (Jan. 8, 2016): 162-65.

Do Manic Spells Help or Hurt Entrepreneurial Boldness?

(p. C1) In an author’s note, Mr. Kidder explains that “A Truck Full of Money” is a kind of sequel to “The Soul of a New Machine” (1981), his Pulitzer Prize-winner about the race to build a next-generation minicomputer. Fair enough: The writer is returning to his roots.
But a book about a software guy and software culture in 2016 isn’t nearly as novel as a book about hardware guys and hardware culture in 1981, and Mr. Kidder is not in the same command of his material.
. . .
(p. C4) There is, however, an element of Mr. English’s story that’s quite striking, one that makes “A Truck Full of Money” feel very much like a Tracy Kidder book.
In his 20s, Mr. English was told he had bipolar disorder. For a long time, he kept his diagnosis a secret. But today, he is wonderfully open and courageous about it.
Many of Mr. Kidder’s subjects are coiled with enough energy to launch a missile, of course, but Mr. English has a psychiatric diagnosis to go with it. The questions Mr. Kidder raises — Are Mr. English’s manic spells responsible for his entrepreneurial boldness? Or does he succeed in spite of them? — are well worth probing, and Mr. Kidder’s portrayal of living with manic depression is as nuanced and intimate as a reader might ever expect to get. On a good day, Mr. English’s mind is gaily swarming with bumblebees. On a bad one, though, he’s “Gulliver imprisoned by the tiny Lilliputians, laid out on his back, tied to the ground with a web of tiny ropes.”
Many of the features of Mr. English’s biography fit a familiar pattern. He was a low-achieving student with a high-watt intelligence. He discovered computer programming in middle school and was instantly smitten; today, he thinks fluently in layers of code — “each hanging from the one above, like a Calder mobile” — and his brain is a regular popcorn maker of ideas.
. . .
When he’s “on fire” (his term), he grows irritable with the slow dial-up connection of other people’s brains. He exaggerates. He slurs his words. His ideas range from extremely creative to flat-out wackadoo.
. . .
Over the years, Mr. English has tried a Lazy Susan of medications to subdue his highs and avert his lows. Many left him feeling listless and without affect. Being bipolar meant constantly weighing the merits of instability versus a denatured, drained sense of self.

For the full review, see:
JENNIFER SENIOR. “Books of The Times; The Road from Mania to Wealth and Altruism.” The New York Times (Tues., SEPT. 13, 2016): C1 & C4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date SEPT. 12, 2016, and has the title “Books of The Times; Review: ‘A Truck Full of Money’ and a Thirst to Put It to Good Use.”)

The book under review, is:
Kidder, Tracy. A Truck Full of Money: One Man’s Quest to Recover from Great Success. New York: Random House, 2016.

Kidder’s wonderful early book, is:
Kidder, Tracy. The Soul of a New Machine. 1st ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1981.

U.S. Start-Up Helps Foreign Start-Ups Navigate U.S. Bureaucracy

(p. B7) Stripe, the San Francisco-based e-commerce start-up, thrives when other businesses do well. So the company wants to help many more businesses get off the ground.
That is the reason behind Stripe Atlas, a new product the company unveiled this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. It aims to make it easier for entrepreneurs to set up small businesses in the United States. If all goes according to Stripe’s plan, Atlas could let start-up founders sidestep some of the bureaucratic hurdles that often hamper building a new business.
Determining eligibility requires little more than filling out a form. After that, Stripe will incorporate an entrepreneur’s company as a business entity in Delaware, and provide the entrepreneur with a United States bank account and Stripe merchant account to accept payments globally.

For the full story, see:
MIKE ISAAC. “A U.S. Start-Up Offers to Lend a Hand to Foreign Entrepreneurs.” The New York Times (Thurs., FEB. 25, 2016): B7.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 24, 2016, and has the title “Stripe Atlas Aims to Ease the Way for Foreign Entrepreneurs.”)

Under Communism, Guests Accepted “Terrible” Service “Because the State Was Paying”

(p. A4) The service, even the management admits, is terrible. “We would not even qualify for two stars,” said Yuri Kurtaba, the sanitarium’s director of maintenance. There is no room service and no Wi-Fi outside a tiny area near the lobby, and the swimming pool has been empty since the war.
. . .
(p. A10) Ms. Gaivoronskaya ‘s sanitarium is no longer closed to the public, as it was in the old days, but otherwise everything is left pretty much as it was. It offers a pebbly beach on the Black Sea, a statue of Lenin in the lobby, high-ceilinged rooms with chandeliers, bad plumbing and rotary telephones, as well as glorious sunshine well into late fall.
. . .
Sergey Rogulov, a 39-year-old driver from St. Petersburg, said he liked the shabby Stalin-era interiors — “it is like time travel back to the U.S.S.R.” — . . .
. . .
Ms. Gaivoronskaya , the veteran sanitarium worker, said she missed the old days, when guests tended not to complain much because the state was paying.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW HIGGINS. “GAGRA JOURNAL: Bad Pipes, Stunning Views and a Tourism Renaissance.” The New York Times (Thurs., OCT. 13, 2016): A4 & A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 12, 2016, and has the title “Bad Pipes, Worse Service: A Soviet Riviera Jewel Is Reborn and Booking Up.”)

Authentic Entrepreneurs See a Problem They Want to Solve

(p. 2) It seems like so many people want to be entrepreneurs these days.
Authentic entrepreneurs are often what I call accidental entrepreneurs. It’s not their aspiration to be on the cover of a magazine. They see a problem in the world and they want to solve it, and entrepreneurship is just a way to get there.
The ones who show up and say, “I want to be an entrepreneur. What do I do first? Give me the to-do list,” that’s not authentic entrepreneurship.
I do think entrepreneurship can be taught, but there is no playbook. The people who are doing it to get rich and be famous are there for the wrong reasons. There’s no harder way to get rich than to be an entrepreneur.

For the full interview, see:
ADAM BRYANT, interviewer. “Corner Office; Humility Is the Mother of Invention.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., NOV. 20, 2016): 2.
(Note: bold in original. The bold is interviewer Adam Bryant. The non-bold is interviewee Jodi Goldstein, the Managing Director of Harvard Innovation Labs.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date NOV. 18, 2016, and has the title “Corner Office; Jodi Goldstein of Harvard Innovation Labs: Humility Is the Mother of Invention.”)

“The Stone Age Did Not Come to an End Because We Ran Out of Stone”

(p. A11) Far from recovering a sense of hopefulness during the relative peace of the 21st century, gloominess has become the default position of the intellectual classes in the Western world.
. . .
Ronald Bailey begs to differ. As his book demonstrates, a careful examination of the evidence shows that, at least in material terms (which is not unimportant, particularly for the world’s poor), life is getting better. The overriding reason for this, according to Mr. Bailey, is continuing technological progress, facilitated–and this is crucial–by the global triumph of market capitalism.
Among the scares examined by Mr. Bailey in “The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century” are overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources (particularly oil), the perils of biotechnology and genetic modification, and global warming.
. . .
No doubt the age of oil will one day come to an end. But as my old friend Saudi Arabia’s Sheikh Yamani used to point out, the Stone Age did not come to an end because we ran out of stone.
. . .
“The End of Doom” is not quite in the same class as Matt Ridley’s classic, “The Rational Optimist,” but it is a good book and deserves to be widely read.

For the full review, see:
NIGEL LAWSON. “BOOKSHELF; Apocalypse Later; Despite an explosion in population greater than Malthus could have ever imagined, global living standards are higher than ever.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., July 27, 2015): A11.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 27, 2015.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

The book under review, is:
Bailey, Ronald. The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015.

Rat Ticklers Find Ticklishness Has Deep Evolutionary Roots

(p. A12) As Michael Brecht and Shimpei Ishiyama of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin point out in their report, tickling raises many questions. We don’t know why it evolved, what purpose it might serve and why only certain body parts are ticklish. And what about that disappointing and confounding truth that all children and scientists must grapple with: You can’t tickle yourself.
The researchers were also inspired by earlier studies. ” ‘Laughing’ Rats and the Evolutionary Antecedents of Human Joy?” published in 2003 in Physiology & Behavior, reported that rats would emit ultrasonic calls when tickled. Ultrasound is too high for humans to pick up.
. . .
The scientists found that tickling and play, which involved chasing a researcher’s hand, both caused the same ultrasonic calls and the same brain cells to be active. The scientists also stimulated those cells electrically, without any tickling or play, and got the same calls.
And they found that you can’t tickle rats when they are not in a good mood, something that is also true of people.
. . .
And the similarity of tickling in rats and humans is, Dr. Brecht said, “amazing.” They even have similar areas that are susceptible for unknown reasons, including the soles of their hind feet, but not of their forepaws.
That similarity suggests that tickling is evolutionarily very ancient, going back to the roots of touch as a way to form social bonds in the ancestors of rats and humans.
“Maybe,” Dr. Brecht speculated, “ticklishness is a trick of the brain to make animals or humans play or interact in a fun way.”

For the full story, see:

JAMES GORMAN. “When Tickled, Rats Giggle and Leap, Researchers Find.” The New York Times (Fri., NOV. 11, 2016): A12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 10, 2016, and has the title “Oh, for the Joy of a Tickled Rat.”)

Ishiyama and Becht’s recent report, discussed above, is:
Ishiyama, S., and M. Brecht. “Neural Correlates of Ticklishness in the Rat Somatosensory Cortex.” Science 354, no. 6313 (Nov. 11, 2016): 757-60.

The earlier paper mentioned above, is:
Panksepp, Jaak, and Jeff Burgdorf. “”Laughing” Rats and the Evolutionary Antecedents of Human Joy?” Physiology & Behavior 79, no. 3 (Aug. 2003): 533-47.

Another paper in this line of research, is:
Rygula, Rafal, Helena Pluta, and Piotr Popik. “Laughing Rats Are Optimistic.” PLoS ONE 7, no. 12 (Dec. 2012): 1-6.

Serendipitous Discoveries “Happen in Medicine All the Time”

(p. 18) In the late 1950s, Dr. Jude was a resident at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, experimenting with induced hypothermia as a way to stop blood flow to the heart by cooling it down and allowing surgical procedures to be performed without fatal loss of blood.
In experiments with rats, he found that hypothermia often caused cardiac arrest, a problem that two electrical engineers down the hall were addressing in experimental work on dogs, using a defibrillator to send electrical shocks to the heart. William Kouwenhoven, the inventor of a portable defibrillator, and G. Guy Knickerbocker, a doctoral student, had seen that the mere weight of the defibrillator paddles stimulated cardiac activity when pressed against a dog’s chest.
Dr. Jude immediately saw the potential for human medicine and began working with the two men.
In July 1959, when a 35-year-old woman being anesthetized for a gall bladder operation went into cardiac arrest, Dr. Jude, instead of using the standard technique of opening the chest and massaging the heart directly, applied rhythmic, manual pressure.
“Her blood pressure came back at once,” he recalled. “We didn’t have to open up her chest. They went ahead and did the operation on her, and she recovered completely.”
. . .
Dr. Jude played down his importance in developing CPR, a breakthrough that The Journal of the American Medical Association had recently compared to the discovery of penicillin.
“It was just serendipity — being in the right place at the right time and working on something for which there was an obvious need,” he told the alumni newsletter of the University of St. Thomas in 1984. “Things like that happen in medicine all the time.”

For the full obituary, see:
WILLIAM GRIMES. “Dr. James Jude Dies at 87; Helped Develop Use of CPR.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., AUG. 2, 2015): 18.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date AUG. 1, 2015, and has the title “Dr. James Jude, Who Helped Develop Use of CPR, Dies at 87.”)

Never Say Die

(p. A7) LONDON — During the last months of her life, a terminally ill 14-year-old British girl made a final wish. Instead of being buried, she asked to be frozen so that she could be “woken up” in the future when a cure was found — even if that was hundreds of years later.
“I want to have this chance,” the teenager wrote in a letter to a judge asking that she be cryogenically preserved. She died on Oct. 17 from a rare form of cancer. “I don’t want to be buried underground,” she wrote.
The girl’s parents, who are divorced, disagreed about the procedure. The teenager had asked the court to designate that her mother, who supported her daughter’s wishes, should decide how to handle her remains.
The judge, Peter Jackson, ruled in her favor. Local news reports said he was impressed by the “valiant way in which she was facing her predicament.” He said she had chosen the most basic preservation option, which costs about £37,000, or nearly $46,000, an amount reportedly raised by her grandparents.
“I want to live and live longer and I think that in the future they might find a cure for my cancer and wake me up,” the teenager wrote in her letter to the judge. Local reports said she had told a relative: “I’m dying, but I’m going to come back again in 200 years.”
. . .
“The scientific theory underlying cryonics is speculative and controversial, and there is considerable debate about its ethical implications,” the judge said in a statement.
“On the other hand, cryopreservation, the preservation of cells and tissues by freezing, is now a well-known process in certain branches of medicine, for example the preservation of sperm and embryos as part of fertility treatment,” the statement said. “Cryonics is cryopreservation taken to its extreme.”
Zoe Fleetwood, the girl’s lawyer, said her client had called Judge Jackson a “hero” after being told of the court’s decision shortly before her death. “By Oct. 6, the girl knew that her wishes were going to be followed,” Ms. Fleetwood told BBC Radio 4. “That gave her great comfort.”

For the full story, see:
KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA. “Wish of Girl, 14, to Be Frozen, Is Granted by British Judge.” The New York Times (Sat., NOV. 19, 2016): A7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 18, 2016, and has the title “Last Wish of Dying Girl, 14, to Be Frozen, Is Granted by Judge.”)

Is Asperger’s a Disease to Be Cured or “a Way of Being” to Be Celebrated?

(p. C1) . . . until eight years ago, Mr. Robison, who wrote the 2007 memoir “Look Me in the Eye,” a touchstone in the literature of Asperger’s syndrome, had never experienced the most obvious aspect of music that neurotypical people do: its simple emotional power.
That all changed, Mr. Robison explains in “Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening,” when he participated in a pioneering Asperger’s study at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston in 2008. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, doctors hoped to activate neurological pathways in his brain that would deepen his emotional intelligence.
Driving home after his first session, Mr. Robison cranked up a song he’d heard countless times before. Before he knew it, tears were streaming down his face.
. . .
(p. C6) “Switched On” is subversive in more ways than one. In this age of heightened sensitivity to neurodiversity, one of the most uncomfortable notions you can raise about Asperger’s is that it can cruelly obscure the most basic elements of personality. The very idea is offensive and wounding to many people, because it frames a difference as a deficit; to wistfully suggest that a person with Asperger’s might be someone else without Asperger’s is to denature them completely, to wish their core identities into oblivion.
“Asperger’s is not a disease,” Mr. Robison wrote in “Look Me in the Eye.” “It’s a way of being. There is no cure, nor is there a need for one.”
In “Switched On,” Mr. Robison, 58, retains his Asperger’s pride. Part of him even fears he’ll lose his special gifts, on the (beguiling, I thought) theory that “perhaps the area that recognizes emotions in people was recognizing traits of machinery for me.”
But he is also torn. He did not come of age when “neurodiversity” was part of our vocabulary of difference. He did not come of age when “Asperger’s” was part of our vocabulary at all. He received his autism diagnosis at 40, and he has many memories of being bullied, losing jobs and mishandling social situations because of his inability to read others.
. . .
Mr. Robison still believes autism is not a disease. “But I also believed in being the best I could be,” he writes, “particularly by addressing the social blindness that had caused me the most pain throughout my life.”
But if the effects of Asperger’s can be mitigated, what consequences will that have? And what does it mean for the future of the neurodiversity movement?

For the full review, see:
JENNIFER SENIOR. “Books of The Times; Tradeoffs to Easing Asperger’s Strong Grip.” The New York Times (Mon., MARCH 21, 2016): C1 & C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date MARCH 20, 2016, and has the title “Books of The Times; Review: In ‘Switched On,’ John Elder Robison’s Asperger’s Brain Is Changed.”)

The book under review, is:
Robison, John Elder. Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2016.