OneGuyFromBarlick

See THIS BBC report on deaths from antibiotic resistant disease....
4 hours ago
More than three million children around the world are thought to have died in 2022 as a result of infections that are resistant to antibiotics, according to a study by two leading experts in child health. Children in Africa and South East Asia were found to be most at risk. Antimicrobial resistance - known as AMR - develops when the microbes that cause infections evolve in such a way that antibiotic drugs no longer work. It has been identified as one of the biggest public health threats facing the world's population. A new study now reveals the toll that AMR is taking on children. Using data from multiple sources, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, the report's authors have calculated there were more than three million child deaths in 2022 linked to drug-resistant infections.
We have been talking about the possibility of this for years. Like climate change, it is now a reality.....

I think I would like to know specifically what diseases for now are being questioned

See THIS for what could be good news....
Scientists believe they have found a new effective antibiotic for gonorrhoea, which could be one of the most promising in decades. Gepotidacin can treat and clear the sexually transmitted infection just as well as existing antibiotics and appears to be able to tackle some emerging drug-resistant 'superbug' strains too, say researchers in The Lancet journal. The work was funded by pharmaceutical company GSK which makes the new tablets. Gonorrhoea is one of the most common STIs in the UK and cases have been rising. In 2023, over 85,000 gonorrhoea diagnoses were reported in England alone - the highest number since records began in 1918. Most of the cases were treatable, but there is growing concern, external that some strains can't be dealt with so easily. Over time, the bacterium has developed resistance to most classes of available antibiotics and experts fear it may become untreatable in the future, unless new drugs are found.

"Universe expected to decay in 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner than previously thought.
by Netherlands Research School for Astronomy"

I don't think that, as usual in such cases I should be too concerned. Universe decay time It's such a gem that I've copied it, of course, to trippssnipps.

That's a really long time. Do you recall when the million pouind question on Millionaire was What is a googol ?This is the sort of territiry we are in. I actually knew the answer (thanks Leigh Tech College) which was a first - so did the contestant. I had also read -

How big is a googol? Really, really big! Mathematicians believe a googol is bigger than the number of subatomic particles in the universe. Despite its size, a googol is still smaller than the total number of possible different games of chess (approximately 10e120).

Fascinating that people are spendig any time researching such stuff.Good topic though - most unlikely to be true, of no value whatever, and no one will ever know if they were right or not.

Couldn't agree more David. One year is a very long time for me!

See THIS BBC report.
4 hours ago
An artificial intelligence (AI) tool has been used to sort through comments about botox and lip fillers, that were submitted as part of a public consultation, in what officials said was the first use of this kind in the UK. Officials set the tool to work sifting responses to a Scottish government consultation on regulating non-surgical cosmetic procedures. They found it came up with "nearly identical" results, when compared to humans set the same task. It is hoped the tool, dubbed "Consult", will spare civil servants from similar time-consuming tasks in future, and save taxpayers an estimated £20m. Consult is one of a planned set of government AI-powered tools that have collectively been dubbed "Humphrey" after the wily senior civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby, from the classic 1980s sitcom Yes, Minister. The series often took aim at excessive bureaucracy in government.

I strongly recommend listening to at least the last part of the latest episode of the World Service's`Science In Action' radio programme entitled `Potential fungal 'Agroterror'?'. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct6yfdLINK It consists of 4 parts, the first about the FBI accusing Chinese terrorists of smuggling a dangerous crop fungus into the US even though it's already in crops worldwide, the second about the glacier that buried a Swiss village and the third about two consortia working at advanced stages of a potential HIV vaccine and have been told their funding from the US will not continue.

The final part is the most significant: The recipient of the Royal Society Faraday Prize 2024, Salim Abdul Karim, gave his prize lecture last week titled `Science Under Threat: The Politics of Institutionalised Disinformation'. Afterwards, he was interviewed by the programme's presenter Roland Pease and it was good to hear such a clear discussion of the topic.

I hear it as I listen to World Service each morning Peter.

Have a look at THIS BBC report on a danger that is being ignored.
3 hours ago
Successive governments have failed to deal with the threat posed by spreading sewage sludge containing toxic chemicals on farmers' fields, a former chair of the Environment Agency has told the BBC. About 3.5 million tonnes of sludge – the solid waste produced from human sewage at treatment plants - is put on fields every year as cheap fertiliser. But campaigners have long warned about a lack of regulation and that sludge could be contaminated with cancer-linked chemicals, microplastics, and other industrial pollutants. Emma Howard Boyd, who led the EA from 2016 to 2022, says the agency had been aware since 2017 that the sludge can be contaminated with substances, including 'forever chemicals'. "Forever chemicals" or PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals which come from things like non-stick saucepans. They don't degrade quickly in nature and have been linked to cancer.
I can well believe this report and back the critics because I came across an example many years ago.
I used to tank milk into a dairy on the moors above Holmfirth. Joe and Edgar Dickinson founded Longley Farm dairy to process milk and feed the residual skim whey and other nutritious waste to pigs in a large unit on the farm. They disposed of the manure from the pigs by piping it out on to the poor pastures that surrounded them and spreading it free of charge on to neighbour's land.
It worked like a charm and the land all round their farm soon showed an improvement but then they hit a problem. The trace boron in the pig muck had an unfortunate side effect, it blocked the uptake of lime, an essential ingredient of the mix to fully utilise the pig muck. The brothers had to find an alternative route to disposal and I am not sure what they did.
The point of the story is that what seemed like a win win situation putting nutrients into the soil failed because of contamination and that is what critics of using sludge are pointing to.