Another Saturday and another post on some absurdities and some cool stuff….hopefully I can inform and entertain….

Local–The Jazz Fest in NOLA has ended and the count is about 500,000 visitors….a huge success.

Personal–Not much to report other than Summer is early….mid 80s in day and mid to high 70s at night and high humidity…..becoming uncomfortable to be outside.

With my diagnosis of cancer I am always on the lookout for stories of any progress in the field…..

A simple blood test can reveal the geographic relationships among healthy cells surrounding a cancerous tumor, researchers at Stanford Medicine and the Mayo Clinic have found. The test is the first noninvasive way to study what’s called the tumor microenvironment, which plays a critical role in determining how different patients—even those with similar tumors—fare after diagnosis and treatment.

In addition to the blood test, the researchers identified nine cellular neighborhoods, or spatial ecotypes, that cancers of all types share and some of which correlate with a tumor’s response to immunotherapy and a patient’s prognosis. Because the blood test can be performed repeatedly, clinicians may soon have real-time access to information about which types of therapies are likely to be most successful.

“To date, cancer therapy has been very much like whack-a-mole,” said Aaron Newman, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical data science.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-05-blood-reveals-tumor-cell-neighborhoods.html

There for awhile it was en vogue to have your DNA tested…..did you know that about 8% of your DNA is not human?

To say that the human genome is full of information would be an understatement. A single cell is packed with a 6-billion-letter code inside of a strand of DNA, acting like an instruction manual for that cell and revealing details to scientists. For instance, DNA tests reveal stunning insights into ancient Mayan ritual sacrifices, mainly that it involved only males instead of females. And on top of that, DNA sequencing and analysis published in Nature found that 8% of the human genome is made up of human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs).

Retroviruses are viruses that use ribonucleic acid (RNA) instead of DNA for genetic material — a key difference between a retrovirus and DNA virus. When cells are infected with retroviruses, they convert the retroviral RNA into DNA, which becomes part of the host cells’ DNA. Then, the cells replicate the retroviruses, and the cycle continues. Some of these primitive retroviruses have infected egg, sperm, and other germ cells, allowing them to become part of the human ancestral genome and be passed down through the generations.

https://www.sciencing.com/2160803/eight-percent-dna-isnt-human-where-it-comes-from/

Meanwhile the science of eugenics is making a return…..

If you’re worried about AI wiping us out, a number of the people who helped build it think they’ve found the countermeasure: smarter babies. In Mother Jones, Abby Vesoulis reports on a growing movement among tech elites and biotech startups that sees embryo screening and, eventually, gene editing as a way to produce future humans brilliant enough to understand—and control—superintelligent AI. As the story explains, a small circle of tech billionaires—including Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Marc Andreessen—are funding a new wave of startups aiming to edit human embryos, ostensibly to eliminate disease. But the ambition doesn’t stop there. Some backers are quietly chasing a far more controversial goal: engineering children with enhanced intelligence.

The pitch is rooted in real promise. Gene editing could prevent devastating inherited conditions. But moving from single-gene diseases to complex traits like IQ is vastly more complicated, involving thousands of genes scientists barely understand. “It’s a bit like playing with the dials on an unlabeled control panel, a level of unknown that gives many scientists and bioethicists pause,” writes Vesoulis. Critics warn the effort veers into modern-day eugenics, raising ethical red flags about inequality, consent, and unintended consequences. Read the full story, which points out the irony that this “superbabies” movement to tame AI “is capturing the fancy—and the wallets—of the same billionaires who bankrolled the AI revolution.”

Can you say….KHAN?

If anyone has experienced the magic ‘shroom then this report is for you….

Researchers may be inching closer to explaining what’s happening in the brain during—and after—a psychedelic trip. A small study in Nature Communications found that a single high dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, was linked to subtle structural changes in brain wiring that appeared to grow with the intensity of the trip, reports NBC News. Twenty-eight adults in London who’d never used psilocybin before first received a tiny, non-trippy dose, then a month later a standard 25mg therapeutic dose, with brain activity tracked via EEG and specialized MRI scans for weeks.

One key finding: Participants who reported stronger psychedelic experiences and greater psychological “insights” also showed larger shifts in how water moves along neural fibers connecting brain regions involved in emotion and impulse control. Senior author Robin Carhart-Harris says the changes made brain tracts appear denser—essentially the opposite of what’s seen in some neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s—though experts stress the results are exploratory and not clearly “good” or “bad.”

About 70% of participants did report feeling better in the weeks after the therapeutic dose. The work feeds into a growing push, backed by federal fast-tracking of psilocybin studies, to understand why psychedelics can produce benefits that outlast the drug’s presence in the body. “We already knew psilocybin could be helpful for treating mental illness,” Carhart-Harris says, per a ScienceAlert. “But now we have a much better understanding of how.”

Since Artemis has gone to the Moon there is a renewed interest in Mars….

Relying on optimal planetary alignment, NASA estimates a roundtrip to Mars would take two to three years. Now, a new study argues that using orbital data from asteroids, rather than planets, could shave years off the trip, potentially cutting total mission time to about five months. Instead of relying solely on the well-mapped dance of planets, Brazilian researcher Marcelo de Oliveira Souza examined the predicted early path of asteroid 2001 CA21, whose initial trajectory appeared to intersect the orbits of both Earth and Mars, per Phys.org. By looking for Mars routes that stayed within five degrees of that asteroid’s orbital tilt and timing them with Mars’ close passes to Earth, he tested opportunities in 2027, 2029, and 2031.

Only 2031 produced an Earth–Mars–Earth configuration that fit the asteroid-linked plane and allowed a sub-year round trip. In fact, Souza toyed with two 2031 missions that would wrap up in 153 and 226 days, Earth.com reports, with the longer option being the most feasible. His scenarios include options for an outbound journey of as little as 33 days and a return journey of as little as 90 days, per WION. He’s not saying a Mars trip should happen based on these scenarios, or even 2001 CA21’s specific path. Rather, his study, published in Acta Astronautica, suggests using early small-body orbits as a new screening tool to spot quicker, fuel-efficient interplanetary routes that standard planning might overlook.

My question is Why bother?

Summer is quickly approaching and if you plan a vacation to a national park you might want to keep this report in mind….

Researchers recently found high concentrations of a dangerous, brain-eating amoeba in several National Park Service (NPS) managed sites in the Western U.S. The findings indicate that this microscopic parasite could be moving farther north as temperatures warm with climate change.

The study was published in ACS ES&T Water, a scientific journal devoted to research on water quality, treatment, and protection. It focused on analyzing 40 bodies of water used for outdoor recreation across five NPS-managed sites in the West: Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Newberry National Volcanic Monument, Olympic National Park, and Lake Mead National Recreation Area. The study analyzed 185 water samples collected from 2016 to 2024.

Be informed and be safe.

Do you feel like you have lived other lives?  If so then this maybe something you should read….

There’s something quietly unsettling about a feeling you can’t explain. Not fear exactly, more like a tug. A place you’ve never been that feels like home the moment you arrive. A language you’ve never studied that sounds, just barely, like something you once knew. Or that persistent sense that you’re not quite from here, not just in terms of geography, but in terms of time. Most people file these moments under “weird” and move on. But a small, serious corner of academic research has been doing the opposite for nearly 60 years.

The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, known as DOPS, sits inside the School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences. It doesn’t dabble in the fringe. It applies rigorous methodology to questions that most institutions won’t touch. The division was founded in 1967 by psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson, who spent decades traveling the world collecting and verifying accounts from people, mostly very young ones, who reported detailed memories of lives they had never lived. His successor, Dr. Jim Tucker, and current researchers including Marieta Pehlivanova and Philip Cozzolino have carried that work forward in peer-reviewed publications.

11 Signs Your Soul Has Lived Before (You Probably Didn’t Notice)

That is it for this Saturday and I hope everyone has a great Mother’s Day weekend….and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”