A Hair Loss Study Raises New Questions About Aging Cells | If Madagascar's animals disappear, it'll take 23 million years to get them back | Vaccine Scientist Warns Antiscience Conspiracies Have Become a Deadly, Organized Movement | Why India hopes to make it into more big financial indices

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A Hair Loss Study Raises New Questions About Aging Cells - WIRED

Maksim Plikus loves talking about hair. The cell biologist from the University of California, Irvine rattles off obscure facts: Sloth hair has a green tinge thanks to symbiotic algae; African crested rats evolved hollow hairs, which they slather with a pasty bark-derived toxin to defend themselves; his last name comes from a Latvian word for “bald.” Growing up in Eastern Europe (he’s neither Latvian nor bald, despite his name), Plikus aspired to do biomedical research. He joined a lab that had him dissecting rat whiskers under a microscope. It was hard, and his hands would shake. But eventually he got the hang of it. “I started to appreciate just the beauty of the follicle,” he says.

Hair loss is underestimated, at least in terms of scientific research. It gets pegged as a cosmetic concern, not a medical one. “One does not die from hair loss. But our hair is part of our identity,” Plikus says. Losing hair takes a huge toll on mental health. Several studies have even reported that patients consider refusing chemotherapy over it.

Today, there are few treatment options. Two drugs (finasteride and minoxidil) can slow or stop loss, but show mixed results for regrowing hair—and results vanish when treatment stops. Another option is surgically transplanting follicles from the back of a person's head to the top. But this just shuffles existing hairs around. So Plikus pursued a new idea—and accidentally found himself exploring not just the mechanics of baldness, but of aging itself.

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If Madagascar's animals disappear, it'll take 23 million years to get them back - Popular Science

By Laura Baisas | Published Jan 11, 2023 10:00 AM EST

It’s borderline cliché to call Madagascar a biodiversity playground. With over 90 percent of its plants and animals exclusive to the island in the Indian Ocean, it’s a perfect place to study how geographic isolation sparks evolution. Since splitting from the African mainland 150 million years ago and 80 million since it split from the Indian subcontinent, its plants and animals have followed their own evolutionary paths. The island’s multiple types of habitats and smaller gene pool has allowed its mammals to split into different species faster than their continental relatives.

However, the isolation on an island can’t protect its flora and fauna from the over-hunting, habitat loss, and changing climate seen throughout the planet. More than 120 of Madagascar’s 219 known mammal species are endangered, including 109 species of its signature lemurs. Extinction is a distinct possibility if humans aren’t careful.

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Vaccine Scientist Warns Antiscience Conspiracies Have Become a Deadly, Organized Movement - Scientific American

Vaccinologist Peter Hotez explains how the movement to oppose science and scientists has gained power

Peter Hotez is no stranger to scientific backlash. The esteemed pediatrician and vaccinologist has been working to develop vaccines for neglected tropical diseases for decades and has encountered fierce opposition to his work. But in recent years the backlash has gained momentum and spread beyond vaccines to science and scientists in general.

Hotez, who is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, chronicles this movement in his new book The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science. The book traces Hotez’s experiences battling the false belief that vaccines cause autism (a condition that his daughter has), the highly partisan backlash to the COVID vaccines (a low-cost version of which Hotez and his colleagues helped develop) and the authoritarian roots of the antiscience movement.

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Why India hopes to make it into more big financial indices - The Economist

In theory, financial indices are similar to thermometers, providing objective numbers that reflect external conditions. In reality, especially if the underlying securities are bonds, human choices about their composition make an enormous difference—as India is now demonstrating.

On September 21st JPMorgan Chase, a bank, decided to include Indian government bonds in its emerging-markets index. The decision was hailed by Indian ministers, and Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s boss, as a sign of India’s rise. Then, on September 29th, ftse Russell, another indexer, announced, with much less ado, that it would not follow suit, owing to concerns about how markets function in India. Investors are awaiting a call by Bloomberg Barclays Emerging Market Bond Index.

JPMorgan’s move may now prompt an influx of $24bn into India’s government-bond market as the switch is made, according to one estimate. Were Bloomberg’s managers to make a similar decision, and ftse Russell’s to be won over by reforms, the gain could rise to around $40bn. That is a sizeable figure, particularly when set against net purchases of Indian government bonds by foreigners, which amounted to just $3.8bn in the first eight months of this year. The changes in JPMorgan’s index, which will take place over a ten-month period beginning in June, could reduce India’s benchmark ten-year interest rate by as much 0.45 percentage points, or about 7%, reckon some economists.

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