Fighting Mosquitoes with Mosquitoes

Since 2015, Zika has been a public health concern in most of the Western Hemisphere. But biotech startup MosquitoMate is furthering prevention efforts by attempting to sterilize disease-carrying mosquito populations.

For the past year, researchers have worked on a way to prevent the spread of the virus. The mosquito that transmits the virus, Aedes Aegypti, is more aggressive than other mosquito species. They bite humans both during day and night, and need a minimal amount of water to lay their eggs.

Wired has profiled the MosquitoMate’s experiments with mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia microbe. While scientists aren’t sure why,  Wolbachia disrupts the reproductive process. When the microbe is present in one or both mating mosquitoes, the resulting eggs are not able to hatch. MosquitoMate is basing their efforts on this research. The lab is infecting the eggs of Aedes Albopictus, a related mosquito that can mate with Aegyptius, with Wolbachia. The insects arethen released into Clovis California, a Zika hotspot. Hundreds of thousands are expected to be released by the end of summer to maximize potential mates for Aegypti females. Once the eggs are laid, they shouldn’t hatch. An upside to these efforts is that the males don’t bite; only females do, to lay their eggs.

The solution sounds straightforward but is still experimental. It’s also difficult to implement nationwide because different states have different processes for getting such a procedure approved. For example, the EPA oversees the procedure in California. The same procedure in Florida, on the other hand, involves more FDA oversight—  which can be slow to approve an experiment like this. The problem is compounded by the fact that Florida is one of the states with the highest Zika-transmission risk.

Bureaucratic hurdles aren’t the only issue MosquitoMate and similar labs face. The community needs to be on board too. Some are suspicious of the procedure, and others find the thousands of new mosquitoes— even though they don’t bite— to be a nuisance. Researchers are hopeful that Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes will reduce the disease-carrying agents, but it is suffering from a negative public perception. To combat this, the lab has been engaging in community education and outreach efforts.

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Tesla’s AutoPilot

An innovative step Tesla took four years ago is now putting them well ahead of the autonomous car competition. In 2012 the automotive manufacturer introduced an around the clock cellular internet connection. As MIT Tech Review’s Tom Simonite has pointed out, this connectivity has proved to be what Tesla needs to make it’s own self-driving cars smarter and safer.

Tesla can use this connection to gather data to help guide its initiative toward self-driving cars. This connection allow Tesla to retrieve data from drivers, observing how a human reacts and behaves on the road in a variety of situations, including light traffic vs. heavy traffic or clear vs. stormy conditions. This data is then used as a benchmark for its constantly self-driving technology.

But Tesla isn’t limited to just pulling observational data. According to Sterling Anderson, Tesla’s Autopilot Program director, the company can upload new software to cars on the road. This constant stream of data exchange has put the auto manufacturer ahead of its primary competitors like Google and (according to some rumors) Apple.

Eighteen months ago Tesla began installing new sensors onto its vehicles, under the premise that they were a part of a new auto-brake feature. But underneath that selling point was the fact that the sensors would also detect nearby objects on the road, enabling engineers to see exactly how drivers were reacting to them on a day-to-day basis. Anderson boasts that every ten hours Tesla receives one million miles of data, and since the sensors became standard in 2014 they have accrued 780 million miles’ worth of driver data.

This information only makes their autonomous software better, and if it performs well against the data, it’s uploaded to the cars for the feedback loop to begin once more. When the software is used on a self-steering vehicle, they can accurately see how well it holds up to a human standard. By leveraging a large data set from real world drivers, Tesla looks to be able to quickly iterate on its self-driving software.

Even though software updates are regularly being installed on Tesla’s vehicles, drivers needn’t worry about autopilot actually taking over when the driver is behind the wheel. But a major issue that Tesla needs to address if/when autopilot is made available is human responsibility. Some drivers, expecting self-driving cars to function free of error, can behave recklessly and find themselves unprepared to take over in case of a malfunction. Google, for example, ran tests where employees were allowed to use self-driving cars. The results were troubling: one employee, while traveling at 65 miles per hour, actually plugged in his cellular device to his laptop. Google has completely restructured its program, but Tesla is still convinced that Autopilot can coexist with responsible human driving practices.

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Hanergy’s Solar Cars

Chinese renewable energy company Hanergy has announced the launch of four models of solar-powered cars. These vehicles feature solar panels on the hood and the roof that, when fully extended, can provide a full charge in about six hours. Although Hanergy appears to be focused on the photovoltaic capabilities, they are best thought of as supplementary. With ideal conditions (cloudless, smogless skies) a full charge is only enough to power the cars for 50 miles. However, they do contain lithium-ion batteries to store energy, and can be charged at stations for longer trips.

Hanergy has been looking to develop solar-powered cars for some time now and had been ready to release prototypes in 2015, but an investigation into the possibility of artificially set stock prices put that work on hold.

Stephen Engle of Bloomberg news has provided some criticism of the car’s clean energy capabilities and company leadership. While the count of 50 miles per charge is lower than some would hope, Hanergy has projected that their cells’ solar energy conversion rate will increase from 31.6% to 42% by 2025.

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The Biggest Loser?

Earilier this summer, a special report from The New York Times shared several findings published in the journal Obesity that provide insight into health, nutrition, and lifestyle changes. By following up with contestants from the hit NBC reality show The Biggest Loser, a team of researchers from the NIH, Towson University, and the Washington DC VA Medical Center found out why former “losers” struggled mightily to maintain the weight losses they achieved on the show.

One contestant weighed 444 pounds when he was first featured on the primetime program. By the season’s end, he had shed 155 pounds, bringing him to a weight of 289 pounds. Since then, however, he regained 159 pounds, bringing him up to 448 pounds— four pounds heavier than he was before the show began. The article is full of similar examples of weight loss followed by the contestants quickly regaining weight—in fact, 13 of 14 contestants regained weight, and four are now heavier than they were before.

The researchers found that the contestants had a precipitous drop in their Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). The BMR determines how many calories a person burns at rest. In people who lose weight the BMR goes down, and the hope is that it will eventually recover. However for the contestants on The Biggest Loser after the conclusion of the show, their BMR remained low. One contestant had to eat 800 calories less a day to maintain his weight.

However, the show’s doctor, Robert Huizenga, questioned the BMR measurements (which were taken six years later) and said it is difficult for most contestants to find or afford adequate ongoing support from specialists and the time to continue to maintain an active lifestyle. Furthermore, the small sample size and lack of controls limited the power of the findings.

Another reason for the failure of the candidates to maintain their weight loss could be related to levels of the hormone leptin, which is involved in regulating hunger and satiety. By the end of the show the leptin levels of most of the contestants had plummeted and failed to recover, allowing hunger and satiety levels to go unchecked, which could explain the subsequent weight gain.

While obesity is a multifaceted issue, the study points out the difficulty in maintaining one’s weight after dramatic weight loss. Most experts recommend losing no more than two pounds per week. It’s not just so that you can adjust to a healthier lifestyle; it’s so your body can learn how to react to the changes.

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The Automotive and Tech Relationship

Bloomberg has shared a piece of data visualization that shows the relationships between automobile manufacturers and tech companies. The complex web highlights manufacturers’ desires to not lose out on profit, despite the (in some places) decreasing role that cars have in everyday life. 

Fiat Chrysler is used as an example. As long as manufacturers and tech companies develop new competing technologies, money is lost in the pursuit of systems that are effectively being researched twice-over. Furthermore, a marriage between the auto-industry and major tech companies ensures that risk— as well as profit— is shared in the long run.

The graphic reveals a few key takeaways. Uber leads the way as far as investors go, with support from Google, Toyota, Tata, and Microsoft. By contrast, Apple failed in partnerships with Daimler and BMW. However it has invested in Didi, a Chinese ride-share company. Didi, in turn, has partnered with Lyft.

Just as interesting as the flow of money is that of personnel. Sometimes, there is a change of personnel between two allied companies— as is the case of Google’s VP of Engineering heading to Uber. On the other hand, the head of Apple’s autonomous car project was hired away by Volkswagen.

Follow this link to see the graphic.

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Where Do We Stand on GMOs?

A critical review in Biotech is the latest voice in the conversation about GMOs and their place in society. The authors, Alexander Y. Panchina and Alexander I. Tuzhikovab, reanalyzed several studies that claimed “technology-related health concerns” with respect to GMOs. Panchina and Tuzhikovab say the evidence for such a correlation was weak, and that the results have contributed to the public opinion’s misunderstanding of GMOs. Their review aims to place the original results of those studies into the right context.

Several weeks after the review was published online, over 100 Nobel laureates signed an open letter to Greenpeace, an environmental NGO. In their message, they requested that the organization cease its efforts to block the introduction of Golden rice, a GMO strain of rice that scientists believe can reduce vitamin-A deficiencies in developing countries.

Richard Roberts, one of the organizers of the letter campaign, told the Washington Post that Greenpeace took an anti-GMO stance to “scare people” and “to raise money for their cause”. However, he is supportive of some of their other projects.

Greenpeace has responded to the letter by reasserting their claim that Golden rice has not been proven to reduce vitamin-A deficiencies, and that the strain will “pave the way for global approval of other more profitable genetically engineered crops.” Other anti-GMO arguments include the fear that genetically modified crops can “pollute” natural gene pools, and that the health effects of GMO consumption are still largely unknown. In order to address malnutrition, critics of GMOs argue for more diverse diets.

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Questions about the 49ers Roster… That aren’t Quarterback-centric

Even with the preseason underway the quarterback question in San Francisco isn’t dying down anytime soon, but there are still other positions that need addressing during the offseason. Since the QB question is taking up the time of most sports bloggers, SB Nation’s David Fucillo decided to explore the issue on his own.

Here are a few of Fucillo’s observations:

There’s a clear divide at Wide Receiver right now between tenured NFL performers and fresh draft talent. Torrey Smith will probably be starting, but for the other wideouts management must make a decision of whether to trust experience (Ellington, Simpson) or hopefully exceptional rookie talent (Rogers).

In 2015, the QB situation was exacerbated by a dysfunctional offensive line. The 49ers made some changes, but there is still a looming question of who will be starting at right tackle—  Erik Pears or Trenton Brown?

Ahmad Brooks is still a talented linebacker. He’s good enough to end up on the 53-man roster, and just got a contract extension. Fucillo doesn’t see a world in which Brooks isn’t succeeded by at least two solid linebackers to step up outside.

Running backs have a notoriously short prime, and even though Carlos Hyde has been dazzling on the field, his style of play is extremely physical. In 2016, seeing his snaps dwindle as he recovers from potential injuries may be a very real possibility. Running back by committee is slowly becoming more commonplace, and in the event of a Hyde loss the 49ers are going to need a few capable halfbacks to carry the load. 

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