Science

Some gut bacteria recycle discarded sex hormones, like oestrogens, back into the body. The level of these bacteria seems to be higher in industrialised societies, which could have big implications for our health

Some gut bacteria recycle discarded sex hormones, like oestrogens, back into the body. The level of these bacteria seems to be higher in industrialised societies, which could have big implications for our health

A new study challenges old assumptions by revealing that water on the Moon likely came from multiple sources over billions of years, rather than from a single major deposit long ago.

A small comet has been spotted slowing down and then speeding up again – but in the opposite direction, which we have never seen before

It was 12 years ago when I posted the first video below of Sarah McLachlan singing what is perhaps her most famous song, “Angel.” I came across it again yesterday and decided to pair it with another version.  The first one, recorded in her home studio, shows her well-known ability to go between her “chest voice” (normal range) and “head voice” (high notes, like a falsetto or yodeling). It’s a lovely song, and was written by her and usually performed only with her own piano accompaniment (there are a lot of versions on the Internet). My earlier post describes what the song’s about.

When I looked up the song on Wikipedia, I found this:

On 8 April 2000, McLachlan performed “Angel” with Carlos Santana on guitar at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California. The show was televised on Fox TV and released on the DVD Supernatural Live – An Evening with Carlos Santana and Friends.

And of course I hoped that song was on video, too, as I’m a Santana fan. Sure enough, it was, though Santana humbly embroiders the voice and piano with soft accompaniment and a short solo (starts at 2:24).  I would have preferred to see him cut loose with an electric solo, but of course it’s not appropriate for this song. Santna’s bit, though, was apparently improvised.

I can’t say that the version with Santana is better than the solo version, but how often do you get to hear two such different musicians play together?

It’s one of the commonplaces that young people who have gender dysphoria (“GD”) will experience both reduced psychiatric problems and reduced suicides if they proceed on to gender reassignment (GR) via “affirmative care”. The suicide claim was dispelled in 2024 by the Finnish investigators given below, who showed that both GD and GR, when compared to controls, do not show increased suicide beyond that predicted from psychiatric problems alone (they used controls).  That dispels the common claim by gender activists pushing GR: “Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?” (That’s for transitioning to female gender, but it can be reversed.)

A new paper from the same group, published in Acta Paediatrica, looks not at suicide but psychiatric “morbidity” (psychiatric problems).  The study was large, controlled, and takes advantage of the fact that in Finland every doctor visit is recorded for every citizen because of the country’s national health system.

The upshot is simple: children and young people (they used subjects up to 23 years old; henceforth called “subjects”) who sought treatment for GD had significantly more severe psychiatric problems and were referred far more often for “specialist level” treatment than were controls.  Those GD subjects were parsed into two groups: those who were given gender reassigment, and those who were not. The conventional wisdom is that if you have GD, then gender reassignment should significantly alleviate their dysphoria, measured by a reduced need for specialist psychiatric treatment.

The conventional wisdom was wrong: gender reassignment didn’t alleviate psychiatric compared to GD people who didn’t get reassignment. The conclusion is that gender reassignment, with its deleterious side effects, was not a good way to improve quality of life, at least measured by the need for psychiatric intervention.

Here’s how the term “gender reassignment” is used in the paper:

Medical GR interventions included masculinising/feminising hormonal treatments, chest masculinisation, and/or genital surgery (vaginoplasty/phalloplasty/metoidioplasty).

These treatments are all irreversible except that removed breasts can be restored by replacements.

Click below to access or download the pdf, or you can see the original paper online here.

As I mentioned, the sample size was large: there were 2,083 GD subjects who presented themselves for treatment, and for each of these subjects the investigators chose eight controls, four males and four females matched to the GD subjects by age and place of residence. The final controls numbered 16,643.

Here are the percentage of subjects who sought specialist-level psychiatric treatment between 2011-2019 (differences from 1996-2010 were in the same direction, but far more people who sought GD treatment had a history of specialized treatment in the later period. The authors don’t know the reason for the rise in GD-associated psychiatric difficulties, but it matches the rise in gender dysphoria in other places, including the U.S.

GD subjects

Sought specialized psychiatric treatment before the presentation for GD (“index date”):  47.9%
Sought specialized psychiatric treatment ≥2 years after the presentation for GD:               61.3%

Controls

Sought specialized psychiatric treatment before the presentation for GD (“index date”):  15.3%
Sought specialized psychiatric treatment ≥2 years after the presentation for GD:               14.2%

This shows that GD subjects, whether or not they went on to GR, initially had about three or more times the rate of psychiatric difficulties than did the controls. That is not new, as GD is generally related to psychiatric difficulties, and it’s likely that some people look for gender reassignment as a way to alleviate their gender dysphoria, or even as a way to alleviate general mental difficulties.  But GD subjects in general did not in general show a lessening of psychiatric difficulties after their presentation; in fact, the rate was increased by about 13.4%.

The important figures, though, are those showing whether or not GR treatment alleviated psychiatric difficulties. After all, that is the rationale for gender-reassignment treatment, whether it be hormones or surgery.  Here is Table 3 from the paper, with the last two columns being the important ones. They’re divided up by sex, and “GR-” means GD subjects not given gender reassignment, while “GR+” means GD subjects who were given gender reassignment. Click table to enlarge; I’ve put a red rectangle around the area of most importance:

This shows that GD subjects, both those who transitioned to female and those who transitioned towards male, did not have a reduction in psychiatric treatment contact (all contact, whether “specialized” or not) after their transition began or was completed. Au contraire: the psychiatric treatments went up sixfold for those transitioning to female genders and 2.5-fold for those transitioning towards male.

If you look at the third and four data columns, you can see the percentages of GD subjects who got psychiatric treatment for GD but who did not go on to reassignment. Curiously, the psychiatric treatment was more frequent in this group than in the group that went on to reassignment, but only before the data of first consultation for GD.

This difference between the third and fourth and the fifth and sixth data points on the first line is curious.  But what’s important here is that there is no marked alleviation of psychiatric contacts for GD subjects who went on to reassignment. They continue to consult psychiatrists, and at about the rate of GD subjects who didn’t go on to reassignment. Again, we don’t see the mitigation of psychiatric difficulties in GD patients that go on to surgery or hormones.  Since those procedures have deleterious side effects (anorgasmia and pronounced difficulties after surgery on genitals or even breasts), there is not a strong case to be made for gender reassignment of gender-dyphoric patients, at least in terms of alleviating mental illness.

The first two columns show the data for both male and female controls. Since they didn’t have consultations for GD, the “index date” for controls was given as the date that their matched GD subjects first had a consultation.  And, as expected, their psychiatric visits were far less numerous than the GD subjects two years after the index date (though the low levels of consultations for GR+ subjects compared to GR-subjects before the index date is still curious, and I may have missed the authors’ explanation).

This is just a cursory interpretation I’ve made after reading the paper twice, and I may have missed some data that feed into the authors’ conclusion below. What’s clear is that GD is associated with psychiatric disorders, though it may not be causal, and that gender reassignment does not improve mental health compared to dysphoric subjects who didn’t get reassigned.  All this suggests that “affirmative care” that puts GD subjects on the path to GR doesn’t, at least in this study, have the salubrious effects that are touted—as measured by the intensity of psychiatric treatment. Gender-reassigned subjects continue to suffer from mental disorders at a rate threefold to fivefold that of controls without gender dysphoria, so GR doesn’t come close to giving subjects the mental stability of controls.

The last paragraph of the paper gives what the authors see as the “Clinical Implications” of their results:

Regardless of gender, adolescents suffering from GD present with excessive psychiatric morbidity. Subsequent to medical GR, psychiatric treatment needs appear to increase. It should be noted that in some individuals, medical GR appears to be linked to deterioration in mental health. Possible mechanisms and vulnerable subgroups should be explored in future studies. The effects of medical GR and the expectations of the patient must be addressed before commencing the treatment. The considerable severe psychiatric morbidity prior to contacting the GIS, and its increase over time, suggest that for some of these adolescents, GD may be secondary to other mental health challenges. This underscores the need to thoroughly assess and appropriately treat mental disorders among those seeking GR before and after undergoing irreversible medical treatments. Psychiatric needs must be adequately met.

 

h/t: Christopher

If the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation shut down, the knock-on effects could release hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2, raising global temperatures even further

Ever since the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in 1986, scientists have needed to monitor radioactive conditions inside. That job currently falls to Anatoly Doroshenko, who explains the dangers and importance of his work to New Scientist

Ever since the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in 1986, scientists have needed to monitor radioactive conditions inside. That job currently falls to Anatoly Doroshenko, who explains the dangers and importance of his work to New Scientist

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Chernobyl lay on the path to the capital Kyiv. When the plant was occupied by Russian troops, meteorologist Lyudmila Dyblenko fearlessly continued taking vital measurements to monitor the nuclear exclusion zone

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Chernobyl lay on the path to the capital Kyiv. When the plant was occupied by Russian troops, meteorologist Lyudmila Dyblenko fearlessly continued taking vital measurements to monitor the nuclear exclusion zone

New Scientist reporter Matthew Sparkes secured unrivalled access to Chernobyl's most crucial scientific sites, where researchers are fighting to protect the area and ensure it remains safe amid the constant threat of attack from Russia

Forty years ago, the catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl sent plumes of radioactive waste into the atmosphere. Now, New Scientist has gained exclusive access to learn how vital work to decontaminate the site has been derailed by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine

Today I’m stealing (with permission) the photos of Aussie biologist Scott Ritchie, whose Facebook page is here.  And what better subject than kangaroos? Scott’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

My last report from my Melbourne to Sydney trip. From Depot Beach in New South Wales. It was epic. Stayed in a National Park cabin that looked out over the ocean. And at 5 o’clock our front lawn became the bar for Eastern Grey Kangaroos [Macropus giganteus]. And in the morning, you could take pictures of the kangaroos watching the sunrise. What could be better for a boy from Iowa?

We had a ring-side seat for roos. There would have been over a dozen here, not including joeys in the pouch:

The boys like a bit of rough and tumble:

They are smart to avoid those claws:

. . . just barely:

Squaring off:

I missed the kick shot. A sudden loud thump. Then the fight was over. One kick!

I don’t know how this is going to work!:

But somehow it does:

 

White-faced Heron [Egretta novaehollandiae] loves a roo too:

Cute:

Hanging loose:

Don’t trip, mom!:

Just in time for a smoke:

I hate pan pipes!:

It’s a tight fit:

Come on big fella. I’m already familied up:

Sunrise at Depot Beach:

In the pursuit of powerful and stable quantum computers, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed the theory for an entirely new quantum system – based on the novel concept of ‘giant superatoms’. This breakthrough enables quantum information to be protected, controlled, and distributed in new ways and could be a key step towards building quantum computers at scale.

In the pursuit of powerful and stable quantum computers, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed the theory for an entirely new quantum system – based on the novel concept of ‘giant superatoms’. This breakthrough enables quantum information to be protected, controlled, and distributed in new ways and could be a key step towards building quantum computers at scale.

The answer is: Very likely not, at least not as long as MAHA embraces quackery and antivax pseudoscience—not that that didn't stop STAT News from ignoring the elephant in the room, vaccines, in search of a "kumbaya" moment between MAHA and public health.

The post MAHA and science-based public health: Can’t we all just get along? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A colossal “cosmic volcano” has erupted in deep space, as a supermassive black hole in galaxy J1007+3540 roars back to life after nearly 100 million years of silence. Astronomers captured stunning radio images showing fresh jets blasting outward while crashing into the intense pressure of a surrounding galaxy cluster, creating a chaotic, distorted structure stretching nearly a million light-years.

The weak nuclear force is the eccentric cousin of the four forces — the one that only shakes hands with left-handed particles. That bizarre preference turns out to be absolutely critical for stars, nuclear fusion, and the existence of most matter. And neutrinos love it. There's just one problem: neutrinos appear to only exist in one handedness, which makes no sense at all.

Every piece of electronics ever sent to Venus has been destroyed within hours of landing, cooked alive by surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Now a team of engineers at the University of Southern California has built a memory chip that laughs in the face of that heat, surviving temperatures hotter than molten lava and it started with a happy accident!