The Washington DC Reflecting Pool Saga

The Washington DC Reflecting Pool Saga in three minutes flat. In case you care...

Why do people smash things when their sports team wins?

Can someone please explain to me what burning cars and e-bikes and smashing and looting stores has to do with celebrating a sports victory?

After Paris St-Germain beat Arsenal in soccer's Champions League final this weekend, PSG fans went on a rampage in Paris and clashed with police. 219 fans were injured, eight of them seriously. Bus, train and rail services were severely disrupted, and one person was reported dead after an accident on the Paris ring-road (which may or may not have been connected to the riots). Some 6,000 police officers were mobilized this year after similar celebrations in Paris turned violent last year, and 57 of those police officers were injured. In all, 780 people were arrested, with over 450 of them still in custody. 

So, this then is what the French do when their team wins? What is the psychology behind that? Or is it just a function of the amount of alcohol imbibed? I could almost understand it if they had lost and they were frustrated, although it still wouldn't be justified.

Well, it turns out that psychology and sociology do have something to say about these violent revellers. 

For one thing, there is something called the "group contagion effect", whereby the anonymity of being part of a large group makes people feel they can get away with something illegal or dangerous, and generally let loose their aggressive side. After a particularly intense game, people may search for a release from the tension through destructive behaviour. This can quickly spiral out of control in a large crowd of other like-minded people, and soon the usual rules and norms get overridden.

There's also an aspect of crowd behaviour called "excitation transfer", where extreme happiness can turn into extreme aggression as one part of the brain gets over-stimulated and over-excited. A state of high physical excitation (increased heart rate, adrenaline production, etc) can continue even after the initial arousal, and the body's leftover energy can become misattributed or transferred to a different emotional stimulus.

Well, maybe there are perfectly good psychological explanations for this stuff, but it still doesn't make any sense to me!

The next Super El Niño is due this year

Batten down the hatches, we're in for a wild ride this year, weatherwise. We're expecting the strongest El Niño weather pattern EVER in the second half of the year - a "Super El Niño", in the rather alarming argot of some climate scientists. Combined with the effects of climate change, this will probably generate some record-breaking weather in terms of temperatures and rainfall: stronger heat waves, worse droughts, more wildfires, stronger storms and more intense floods (although, as recompense, the Atlantic hurricane season may be less intense).

El Niño is a long-term weather event, usually lasting nine to twelve months, in which sea surface temperatures in the equatorial regions of the Pacific Ocean are warmer than normal. This has the effect of altering and de-stabilizing the world's weather patterns for the duration, as it re-distributes heat across the whole planet. These events tend to occur every two to seven years, following no fixed schedule. La Niña, on the either hand, is where the equatorial Pacific is cooler than average, causing different weather patterns that can have their own challenges.

Currently, sea-surface temperatures are rising rapidly, with further intensification expected in the months to follow. The volume and intensity of sub-surface warm water anomalies in the Pacific are as large as have ever been seen, scientists say, "more out of balance than at any time in observed history". 

So the chances are high that this year's El Niño will be the all-time strongest, even more extreme than the previous record-holder of 1877-8. That year's El Niño caused catastrophic famines across India, China, Brazil and elsewhere that killed more than 50 million people (3-4% of the world's population at the time), "arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity".

While this year's El Niño may be even stronger, it's effects may not be quite as drastic. These days, we are forewarned by our technology (although we do then have to act on the warnings!) The Super El Niño of 1982-3 was a pivotal turning point in our understanding of the phenomenon, and led to crucial advances in ocean monitoring and real-time tracking. They helped predict the Super El Niños in 1997-8 and 2015-6.

Plus, we are better prepared socially, politically, technologically and economically to deal with the effects - at least in theory, and provided we can stop waging war on each other for long enough to deal with it.

NASA chief wants to make Pluto a planet again

Back in 2006, poor Pluto was officially demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet. Generations of school children who had learned the mnemonic "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" have had to re-learn it as "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nothing".

Not a big deal, you might think. But it was controversial then, and apparently it remains controversial to this day. The argument was that a planet has to fulfill three (admittedly rather arbitrary) criteria: to orbit the sun (not another planet), to be massive enough to have been made fully spherical by its own gravity, and to have cleared its orbit of debris. Pluto, they said, failed to fulfill the third criterion, sharing an orbit as it does with the asteroids, icy bodies and other dwarf planets of the Kuiper Belt. 

The curremt (Trump-appointed) NASA chief Jared Isaacman is particularly exercised by the subject, and is making it his mission to reinstate Pluto as a full planet. The odds are against it, though, as the decision rests with the  International Astonomical Union (IAU), a worldwide group of professional astronomers whose job it is to define and name celestial objects and surface features. (Isaacman, on the other hand, is a billionaire finance-bro and a "private astronaut" -  a typical Trump nominee.)

It probably shouldn't surprise us that a Trump appointee is looking to turn back progress. It won't surprise me too much if he turns out to be a flat-earther too.

A deluge of fireballs

Just while I am on the subject of space, we here on Earth seem to be experiencing an extraordinary, indeed unprecedented, number of fiery meteors ("fireballs").

There are meteor strikes happening all the time, some of them even making it though burning up in the atmosphere to land as meteorites. There are also predictable meteor showers like the Perseids that happen every year, caused by the Earth's path through the tail of a specific comet. But this is different.

It is different partly because of the size of the rocks that are hitting and burning up in the upper atmosphere. In terms of visibility, most fireball events draw a few witnesses; in March 2026 there were at least five that drew over 200 eyewitness reports. One on March 8th over Europe had 3,229 reports from the public. There have been more sightings in one month than in the previous 15 Marches combined. Many also punch deep enough into our atmosphere to cause sonic booms, rattling windows and scaring pets. One crashed through the roof of a residential building in Texas and ricocheted around the bedroom. A house in Ohio had a similar experience, as did a house in the German town of Koblenz-Güls.

This is not the prelude to an alien invasion, though. Mapping of the trajectories of these meteors shows that they are emanating from a region called the Anthelion Sporadic Source, a diffuse region of the Solar System where there are lots of asteroids and meteoroids under the influence of Jupiter and other gravitational forces. Meteors from this region are usually quite few and scattered, making this current spate something of an anomaly (and regular viewers of Star Trek know what an "anomaly" usually portends!) The heliocentric origin of the meteors, though, means that we can rule out an incursion from other galaxies. At least for now.

Another Moon mission? Why?

After a few false starts as NATO erred on the side of caution and dealt with various technical challenges, the Artemis II manned mission to the Moon is due to blast off on April 1st (foolish? I don't think astronauts are superstitious).

It doesn't plan on landing on the Moon - the last time that happened was 1972. Artemis II will just fly around it and back home. But this 10-day trip around the Moon is still a big step in the reboot of American lunar ambitions, and is seen as an important testing run for future missions. Ultimately, the plan is to establish a permanent human base in the Moon, theoretically by as early as 2030.

The Artemis program is the successor to the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s. (In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, so the name was pertinently chosen.) Artemis I was an unmanned flight 3½ years ago to test out the Space Launch System (SLS). Artemis II will be the first manned mission to go past the International Space Station (in near Earth orbit) since 1972, and the first to include a Black astronaut (Lt. Cmdr. Victor Glover), the first to include a woman astronaut (Christina Koch), and the first to include a Canadian astronaut (Col. Jeremy Hansen).

How did a Canadian wangle his way on there? Negotiations over several years (pre-Trump, back in the days when the USA and Canada actually got along) yielded an agreement whereby a Canadian astronaut got to tag along in return for about $2 billion in Canadian investment in the lunar program, and the provision of an AI-enabled robotic arm designed to operate on a lunar orbital space station called the Lunar Gateway. (Robotic arms are something of a Canadian specialty - the original Canadarm paved the way for Canadian astonauts Marc Garneau and Roberta Bondar to fly into orbit; Canadarm2 was Chris Hadfield and David Saint-Jacques' ticket to the ISS; and Canadarm3 was part of the Artemis deal for Jeremy Hansen.) 

As it turns out, the Gateway project has since been abandoned in favour of a push for a lunar land base (at least partly to get ahead of Chinese lunar ambitions), so the future of Canadarm3 is unclear, but Hansen still gets to fly. The deal also includes a second lunar mission for a Canadian, and a Canada-based control centre for the robotics (maybe?) The European and Japanese space agencies are also partners in the Artemis program, and they are also expecting to have astronauts included on future missions.

Incidentally, the current American push for the Moon is far from all Donald Trump's doing, whatever he might try to convince us of later. It was George W. Bush that first announced a new initative for NASA after the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster sent US space ambitions into an existential tailspin. Barack Obama repurposed Bush's lunar project into an asteroid mission, but that too foundered, and space exploration gradually became the province of private space companies like SpaceX for a while. It was only when space missions by Japan, India, Europe and particularly China started to eclipse American efforts that NASA announced its new lunar direction. A new space race had begun.

When Col. Hansen orbits the Moon in the Orion crew module, he will get to see, first-hand, parts of the Moon's far side that have never been seen by human eyes (although the flight's trajectory will actually keep it at quite a distance away). As Chris Hadfield puts it: "the first non-American to fly beyond Earth orbit will be from Canada, not from Russia, not from China, not from India". Depending on the precise trajectory taken, he will probably be further from the Earth than any human ever before at one point.

Do we need to go to the Moon? No. Is it exciting? Sure!

UPDATE

As the excitement starts to diminish after a successful Artemis II mission, reality sets in. Some people are distinctly underwhelmed that, in 2026, all we can manage is a short fly past the Moon, while 57 years ago, men were speaking around on another heavenly body.

Another reality check: even while the Artemis II project was under way, the Trump administration was announcing stringent cuts to NASA's budget. Cuts of 23% were announced, mainly to pure science programs and future robotic missions. At the same time, the budget of Space Force - the Trump-created sixth branch of the US military - was more than doubled, and now stands at about four times NASA'S budget. This gives an insight into Trump's real priorities.

Should we be concerned about a helium shortage?

We are told that the US/Israel-Iran war, and Iran's closing of the Strait of Hormuz in particular, is causing a worrying global shortage of helium. So, there might not be enough lighter-than-air gas to fill party balloons? We won't be able to make our voices sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks? What's the big deal?

While those might the most common every day uses for helium the man in the street might think of, they are far from the most important. Helium gas is indispensible to the manufacture of computer chips. And computers are what make the world go round these days. 

Helium is the coldest liquid on earth, and it's used as a protective inert atmosphere as tiny semiconductor circuits are etched onto silicon wafers, as well as to flush out the toxic residue after chemical washes. Helium is also used to cool the super-powerful magnets in MRI machines, to prevent air bubbles forming in the production of fibre optic cables, to detect leaks in high pressure vacuum systems in heat exchangers and air conditioners, as a shield gas in arc welding, to prevent nitrogen narcosis in deep-sea diving oxygen supplies, for cleaning out rocket fuel tanks, and any number of other industrial applications.

Industrial helium is a by-product of natural gas processing, but not many countries are geared up to produce it in usable quantities. Qatar produces about a third of the global supply, only the US produces more. Other than those two big guns, the only other producing countries of any note are Russia and Algeria (don't ask!) And it is the Qatar production that is at risk here, using as it does the Strait of Hormuz to get to market.

Why is the helium market dominated by so few countries? Not clear. I read that it is expensive to extract and expensive to store (sure, but that would apply to all countries). It also appears that not all gas fields have a high enough helium levels to make extraction economical, and different gas fields have different concentrations even within a country. Recently, some quite concentrated helium sources have been found in areas WITHOUT gas reservoirs, such as in Tanzania, which is leading to a hunt for other such hydrocarbon-free helium reservoirs.

Besides, you say, isn't helium all around us in the air? Well, technically yes, but the concentraction of helium in the earth's atmosphere is of the order of 5 parts per million (0.0005%), so it's definitely not practical to extract it from the air. Universe-wide, it is much more common - in fact, it's the second most abundant element after hydrogen, comprising around 23% of the mass of the universe - but it is almost all found within stars. Not easy to mine.

Back here on earth, the price of helium has soared since the war began. The helium shortage will increasingly force semiconductor production cuts and will have supplements effects from electronics (computers, phones) to automotive production (particularly electric vehicles). It might sound like a relatively unimportant victim of Trump's war in Iran and the least of our worries, but helium actually packs a big punch in global industry. Helium is indeed a big deal.

The challenges of doing science in Trump's America

Here's a good account of how scientific research has had to pivot in Trump's America.

The article deals specifically with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), but I'm sure it applies to any number of government departments and agencies. Scientists and researchers are having to self-censor and find creative ways around the Trump-mandated ban on using MAGA trigger words and phrases like "global warming", "climate change", "solar energy", "alternative energy", "decarbonization", "energy transition", "renewables", "environmental justice", "greenhouse gas emissions", "carbon sequestration", "sustainability", even "safe drinking water". Otherwise, they run the risk of having their research censored or their grant applications denied.

So, instead of using phrases like "climate change", resourceful researchers - those that have not already given up completely or moved away, that is - are trying to use less controversial, softer phrases like "elevated temperatures", "soil health" and "extreme weather", so as not to trigger discovery by the automated tools of the Trump woke police.

I know it reads like a bad science fiction story, but this is really happening in modern-day America. In Trump's America there are about 100-plus words and phrases that are essentially banned in academic and scientific research circles, about a third of them related to climate change (which is, remember, a "hoax"). Some of them are real head-scratchers, like "diesel", "affordable housing", "runoff", "microplastics", "rural water". There are also whole other categories of banned words to do with DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), gender, abortion, immigration, etc. 

Of course, if your whole paper or grant application is about solar energy or affordable housing, it is essentially impossible to avoid these phrases. So, the beleaguered American scientific community is finding alternative sources of funding and alternative publication destinations. And some of them are just leaving for less restrictive and repressive regimes. This is having a huge impact, not only on the American research community, but on that of other countries too, where local talent is now having to compete against well-qualified American ex-patriates and academic exiles (as my son-in-law, who is currently looking for post-doc opportunities abroad, is finding, to his chagrin).

US government department websites have been dilligently "scrubbed" of offensive words like "climate change" and "renewable energy" since early in Trump's second administration. Whole reports have been conveniently removed if they were considered too woke or prejudicial. It makes me wonder: did Trump personally come up with the list of proscribed words and phrases? And who are the people who carry out these bizarre instructions? Talk about the banality of evil.

Imagine working in such a system! Imagine that the field of inquiry you have spent your whole career in (or your future prospective career) is in one of these proscribed areas! Imagine having to avoid using the word "green" or "black" anywhere in your dissertation! I'm sure that many are just hoping to wait it out, on the assumption that "this too shall pass". Others, though, may be second-guessing their whole careers.

I have a suspicion that most Americans are not even aware that this is going on under their noses. Many will not care, of course, those who routinely complain about "radical wokeness" and other such nonsense. But many others will. And if I just found out about it (or at least about the extent of it), I'm sure there are many potentially concerned citizens who have no idea just how close to Margaret Atwood's Gilead or George Orwell's Thought Police modern America has become.

Even teabags are full of microplastics

By now, we have pretty much come to understand that microplastics and nanoplastics.(collectively, MNPs) are everywhere, in the food we eat, the water we drink, the very air we breathe. Our bodies are therefore just full of them.

A recent meta-study shows just how many are entering our system through as innocent an activity as drinking a cup of tea. Setting aside MNPs in the water, MNPs leaching from the cup/mug/teapot, and MNPs from the packaging and processing operations, the studies show that the teabags themselves are a significant source of micro- and nano- plastics.

I try to avoid those fancy pyramid-shaped "silk" teabags, which are essentially made of nylon (i.e. plastic). Pour boiling water over them and you have to expect a flood of plastic bits to be released. But traditional "paper" teabags (which are actually primarily made of bleached wood pulp and abaca, a banana plant derivative) are also a source, made worse by the fact that many such paper teabags are treated with polypropylene, epichlorohydrin, etc, to help strengthen and seal them. Not even "biodegradable", "compostable" and PLA "bioplastic" teabags are exempt.

A single teabag, it seems, can release between 1.3 and 14.7 billion MNPs, depending on the study and the methodology. Those are huge and scary numbers, but they do not mean that teabags are killing us, merely that they are contributing to the plastic load in our bodies and the environment, which over time will degrade our health in subtle and opaque ways.

Makes you feel like throwing your hands up in despair and having a cup of tea, doesn't it? Oh, wait...

Go ahead, coffee is probably good for you

Coffee must be one of the most-studied substances on earth. There are no end of articles and studies claiming to provide proof that coffee is good for this or that, or bad for the other. Often these claims are in direct conflict with each other, so we still don't really know if it's good for you or bad for you on balance. Most people probably have a vague idea that it's slightly bad for you, but not so bad that you need to give it up (maybe just limit it a bit). And that may be just about right.

While it's pretty much uncontested that coffee, and specially caffeine, stimulates the central nervous system and increases alertness, there is also some pretty convincing evidence that coffee is also good for long-term brain health and cognitive function and as protection against dementia. 

A recently-published large longitudinal study and meta-analysis out of Harvard suggests that a daily intake of two to three cups of caffeinated coffee or one to two cups of tea have a protective effect on the brain and result in statistically-significant reduced dementia risks and improved cognitive function. Decaffeinated coffee had no such benefits. Note that these are just observational studies, and so can only uncover associations and not definitive proof, but they are consistent with many previous studies and meta-analyses.

So, unless you suffer from caffeine sensitivity or acid reflux or are excessively prone to sleep disruptions, go ahead have a couple of cups of java (or tea). Don't get carried away, of course, but equally don't be swayed by some of the reports of coffee's more iniquitous effects.

Why doesn't the daytime moon look full?

I had a sudden panic today. The moon was way up in the sky, in the middle of the day, i.e. at the same time as the sun was also way up in the sky. So, I thought, "wait, there's nothing in the way of the sun shining on the moon, so why doesn't the moon appear full?"

Well, of course, I'm not the only one to wonder that. And, once it is explained, the answer is obvious.

Yes, the sun is high in the sky, but it is off to one side of the moon as we look at it from earth. The sun is therefore only shining on one side of the moon as we look at it, and so only part of it reflects back to us here on earth. It would only appear full to us if the sun was shining on it straight on (from our perspective).

Phew! Thank god there's a reasonable explanation.

Maybe cows are not all stupid

If you thought that cows were pretty stupid, well, you're probably right. But maybe not AS stupid as you thought.

It turns out that cows have joined the relatively exclusive club of tool-wielding animals, in the company of humans, chimpanzees, crows, and maybe humpback whales.

And before we get too excited, it's really only Veronika, a 13-year old Swiss Brown cow that lives on a farm in Austria, essentially as a pet. Veronika, over the years, has perfected her technique of using sticks or brushes to scratch herself in various places. It's not much maybe, but it's enough to get some animal behaviourists quite excited.

All those other cows? Yeah, pretty stupid.I 

The search for an Alzheimer's cure takes a different path

Oodles of money has been pumped into Alzheimer's Disease research over the years, and all we have to show for it is aducanumab, a controversial monoclonal antibody that targets amyloid plaques in the brain (approved on an accelerated schedule for use in the US, but not approved in Canada). The drug had inconsistent and contradictory clinical trial results, and faced significant debate over its effectiveness and widespread hesitation by doctors. Ultimately, it was withdrawn by its manufacturer, Biogen, when they realized they couldn't make any money from it.

Much of the difficulty in making any headway against Alzheimer's is because, thus far, the understanding that Alzheimer's is largely caused by clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid in the brain. This has been the conventional wisdom since the finding was published in a 2006 paper, and that is where almost all the effort towards a cure has been directed. Unfortunately, that paper was found to be based on fabricated data, and was retracted in 2024. Nearly 20 years wasted.

Since this retraction, research has opened up somewhat. Promising research right here in Toronto looks at beta-amyloid proteins not as a destructive abnormally-produced protein, but as part of the brain's immune system. The brain has its own immune system, just like the rest of the body and, when it encounters bacteria or trauma, it fights back, using beta-amyloid as a key contributor. Because the fat molecules making up the membranes of bacteria are very similar to the membranes of brain cells, the beya-amyloid can end up attacking the very brain cells it is supposed to be protecting, leading to chronic progressive loss of brain cell function, i.e. dementia.

This makes Alzheimer's (the most common type of dementia) not so much a disease of the brain as a disorder of the immune system within the brain, or an autoimmune disease. We do have steroid-based therapies against other autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. But this kind of therapy will not work for the brain, but targeting other immune-regulating pathways in the brain may lead to new and effective treatments for the disease.

Either way, though, the search for a cure is pretty much back to square one.

What is fire?

So, here's a question: what actually is fire? Of course, everyone knows what fire is. We've known since the Stone Age, right?

Well, yes and no. We might think we know what fire is because it's so familiar. But scientifically, it's kind of hard to pin down.

Clearly, it's not a solid or a liquid. So, maybe a gas? The flames of a fire do involve hot gas products, which rise because they are less dense than the surrounding cooler air. But the flames we see are actually burning soot (burned particles of carbon) that glows yellow-orange because of the high temperatures. However, the flames only exist while the fire is burning, and don't exist in a stable state on their own. They can't be collected in a jar like CO2 or water vapour, and so they are not a gas.

How about plasma, the fourth state of matter? Plasma is like a soup of charged particles, electrons and ionized atoms. It's possible there might be enough ionized atoms in the hottest part of the most intense fires to qualify as a kind of weak plasma, but fire as a whole does not behave as a plasma.

In fact, it turns out that fire is not matter at all. Fire is a process, a kind of chemical reaction called combustion, which requires fuel (something to burn), oxygen, and an initial spark or heat source. Interestingly, it seems that fire - with visible oxygen-fuelled flames - is unique to Planet Earth (or so this Science Alert article claims, although this seems improbable to me).

Dr. Oz explains MAGA Math

After Donald Trump promised to reduce American drug prices "by 1,400, 1,500%", most people were left scratching their heads. Wouldn't that make them free? Or rather, wouldn't drug companies be paying customers significant amounts to take their drugs? Can you really reduce prices by more than 100% of the price?

He left it to ex-talk show host and now boss of America's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, to explain Trunp's higher math to us mere mortals.

"The President does the calculation by saying, 'OK, if a drug was $100 and you reduce it by $50, it's 100% cheaper because you're taking $50 off and left with only $50 ... they're equal, so it's 100%' ". Clear?

When asked about how a 1,500% reduction would work, Oz explained, "Well, if you take a drug that is $200 or $240 like we did last week and reduce it to $10, those are the numbers you're talking about". Okaaaay...

Still shaking my head.

Some thoughts on our mental health crisis

Another interesting extended article in the Globe today, this one by British psychiatrist Sami Timimi, who specializes in treating children and teens. It seems to some extent to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom and zeitgeist on mental health.

Timimi seems skeptical of the reported levels of mental health problems in Western society, and particularly of the anecdotal reports and claims of individuals. It seems like everyone knows someone who has "mental health issues" these days, whether it be depression, anxiety, autism, ADHD, PTSD, or sometimes combinations of several of these. Like me, Mr. Timimi is questioning the validity of some of these claims, self-diagnoses and even professional diagnoses.

It's almost cool among young people (and their parents) these days to have a mental health condition or two. Even younger children (and certainly their parents) are well-versed in psychological lingo, and sprinkle their conversations with phrases like "the spectrum", "masking", "neurodiversity", "chemical imbalance", etc, with gay abandon. The ease of self-diagnosis using Dr. Google doesn't help, nor does the well-intentioned empathy and compassion about mental health in modern Western society.

Timimi sees this as evidence, not so much of psychological liberation and literacy, as of the tentacles of what he calls the Mental Health Industrial Complex worming its way into the minds of the masses. 

It seems indisputable that the prevalence of diagnosed conditions like depression, anxiety, autism and other mental health conditions, particularly in youth, has snowballed in recent years, and studies reveal a much greater number who see their mental health as "poor" or just "fair" compared to a few years ago. But, at the same time, investment in mental health treatment and research has also surged, and the stigmatization of mental health conditions reduced so mcuh that it is almost considered glamourous amongst some cohorts (like teenage girls). 

So, is the increased attention paid to mental health just not helping, or is it actually making things worse in some respects? Mr. Timimi has his suspicions that the latter may be happening, something he calls the "Treatment Prevalence Paradox". It's a brave move to say so openly, and he risks being ostracized by his own profession. 

He even goes so far as to suggest that the diagnosis of mental health issues, even by trained professionals, is so subjective as to be next to useless. For example, if he tells a patient that "depression is the presence of persistent low mood and negative thinking", that is little better than saying that a pain the head is cause by a headache.  And, unlike with other aspects of healthcare, even once a diagnosis is arrived at, there is rarely a causal agent that can be objectively identified, or even an obvious path of treatment to follow. His frustration with his own profession is palpable.

As for the battery of treatments and drugs offered by the Mental Health Industrial Complex, Mr. Timimi is equally scathing. Rather than rushing for a psychological assessment and medication, he has these thoughts: 

• Don't rush. Being able to tolerate, live through, and even find meaning in, low mood or anxiety is maybe a sign of resilence, not a marker of a disorder. So, don't jump into panic mode and look for an immediate professional diagnosis.
• Don't try too hard. Try not to critically compare your children with others and put pressure on them to conform. They may just be different.
• Don't fear emotions. Expressing (sometimes extreme) emotions and changing emotions is part of the process of growing up, and not a sign of psychological imbalance.
• Don't be controlling. Instead of looking for things that distress you about your child, try looking for things that you like instead.
• Don't obsess about concepts. Constantly using psych-speak like "meltdown" and "masking", and engaging in amateur diagnosis, might just increase your anxiety (and theirs!) about your child's mental health.

Brave and thought-provoking stuff. Mr. Timimi is saying, yes, arm yourself with knowledge, but don't obsess too much about your child's mental health. Sometimes they are just sad or worried; they don't necessarily have depression or clinical anxiety, and they don't necessarily need intervention or treatment.

Where we are with quantum computing

A lot has already been written about the burgeoning field of quantum technology, but a three-page "Field Guide to Quantum Tech" in the Business section of today's Globe and Mail is as good a summary as I have see of what quantum technology is, its promise and its challenges, and where we are with it (we, the World, and we, Canada). 

Thankfully, you don't need to know the details of quantum theory to understand its potential. Suffice it to say, quantum mechanics, the theory,  was developed in Europe in the 1920s, and it was so revolutionary that we are still trying to come to grips with it a century later. Despite its difficult concepts - Schrodinger's cat, spooky action at a distance, "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics", all that - it has proven to be a remarkably robust and comprehensive model of our real-world physical reality.

The main technology envisaged for quantum technology is quantum computing. At its simplest, while a conventional computer uses billions of microelectronic switches to manipulate the 1s and 0s ("bits") that computers use for even their most complex operations, a quantum computer can take advantage of "qubits", which may be in the form of tiny superconducting circuits, ions trapped in electromagnetic fields, or beams of light orientated in different ways. What makes them special, though, is that, according to quantum theory, they can exist in two possible states (á la Schrodinger's cat), so that they can represent 1s and 0s, but also a mix of both. Under QM, particles can be in more than one place at the same time, and can act as though they are connected even when separated by large distances.

When many qubits are linked together, they can make quantum computers incredibly fast, capable of calculations that would take conventional computers literally millions of years to complete. Not all computer tasks can be accelerated in this way, but potential applications include cryptography (the current model of RSA cryptography, derived by multiplying together two massive prime numbers, would be child's play for a quantum computer - that's also part of the challenge it represents), but also modelling financial risks, optimizing traffic flow or factory production lines, simulating the behaviour of molecules to discover new medicines or better batteries, unspecified military applications, and many other things we probably haven't even thought of yet.

That, at least, is the promise. However, qubits are hard to work with. They typically have to be isolated from the slightest disturbance, often in cryogenic facilities to minimize vibrations and maintain them at temperatures colder than deep space. In order to be "fault-tolerant", quantum systems need to dedicate many more (orders of magnitude more) qubits to protecting and keeping a check on those doing the actual calculating.

Challenges notwithstanding, many, even most, countries are ploughing oodles of money into quantum research (China, of course, is way out in front), and many important breakthroughs have already been achieved. Big hitters like IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Nvidia are investing heavily, although new discoveries (quantum leaps?) are just as likely to come from startups like Quantinuum, IonQ, PsiQuantum and Rigetti Computing in the USA, Photonics, Two Small Fish Ventures, D-Wave Quantum and Xanadu in Canada, or any number of lavishly state-funded outfits in China.

Either way, quantum computers are currently still far from operating at a commercial scale. We may be 5-10 years away from that, or it may be decades. It's not clear when quantum tech might yield big returns, or if it EVER will. A US government competition aims to determine if reliable and cost-effective quantum computers can be developed by 2033, which is seen as a moderately ambitious date (although don't be surprised if that competition gets cancelled by the anti-science Trump administration).

Canada is considered a reasonably major player globally, even if the financial investment in the country is small compared to players like Japan, Britain, USA, Germany, and of course China, whose quantum research and commercialization commitments almost matches the rest of the world combined. Within Canada, quantum research is mainly located in hotspots like the Kitchener-Waterloo- Cambridge triangle in Ontario, British Columbia's Lower Mainland, the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, and the university of Calgary in Alberta.

Even if AI continues to develop to the extent that it too can immensely speed up numerical calculations and simulations, as some suggest, quantum computers can't be ignored, even if only because they have to potntial to render conventional cybersecurity obsolete. Some warn that encrypted data is already being harvested by nefarious agents for later unlocking by quantum computers.

And computing is not the only application the quantum revolution is affecting: the quantum sensing sector is already up and running. For example, quantum effects can be used to improve our measurement and modelling of the Earth's magnetic field, which is crucially used by navigation systems and smartphones. 

Quantum information systems are also already in use for communication and surveillance. For example, there is a form of quantum radar that can spot interlopers without revealing its own presence like conventional radar systems do. Countries across the world are exploring other military potentials for quantum tech.

Quantum stocks took off in 2024, thanks to some high-profile advances in the technology, and many private investors are keen to get in early for the Next Big Thing. In fact, as happened with AI, some analysts are warning that we are probably already in bubble territory, as people are investing on hype alone, without a deep understanding of the technology involved and its potential pitfalls.

We are still coming to grips with artificial intelligence (AI), learning what it can do, dealing with its abuse. It seems a stretch to be thinking about quantum technology too. But it is coming, either slowly or all of a sudden, and we need to be ready for it. 

Why is it alway men that engage in risky investing behaviour?

If you've ever wondered why it always seems to be guys that do all that investment in cryptocurrencies, meme stocks, sports gambling, even belief in Donald Trump and conspiracies theories, some new research purports to explain it (but fails, in my opinion).

The research, published in the journal Judgment and Decision Making (yes, that's the name of a scientific journal!), identifies something called the "confidence-information-distortion-confidence" cycle. This essentially says that, once men have an initial opinion on something - whether it be choosing a mortgage or insurance option, making investment decisions, choosing a financial advisor or going it alone - they tend to interpret any subsequent pieces of information, whether confirmatory or useful or relevant or not, as support for their initial assessment. Even if it shouldn't rationally affect their decision at all, each new item of information somehow increases their confidence that their original opinion was right. 

You could just call it "conviction bias", rather than the pseudo-science gobbledygook this study chooses to employ. And it's hardly surprising or news, is it? More to the point, it doesn't really explain why men are more affected by this logic blindness than women. But it remains a fact that some 61% of cryptocurrency investors are men, high-risk stock trading tends to be a male province by a two-to-one ratio, and sports betting is male thing by a three-to-one margin.

A study explaining why women are more risk-averse than men might be more useful. I imagine it has its origins in evolutionary biology or child-rearing or something of that sort. These things usually do.

Ford is all heart and no head in animal-testing question

Doug Ford has found himself a new cause célèbre to fixate on, not something he has ever expressed an interest in before, as far as I know. I guess he maybe sees it as a vote-winner?

The province of Ontario is to ban all testing on dogs and cats - "pets" as he calls them, in an attempt to play on the emotions - whether for cosmetics or medical research. "We're gonna catch you", warns Ford, who has decided that the practice is '"cruel" and cannot be allowed in his province.

This Paulian conversion seems to have happened overnight, after Ford was alerted to the use of young dogs in medical research at the Lawson Research Institute at St. Joseph's Health Care in London, Ontario, in pursuit of "groundbreaking research that has resulted in major strides in cardiac care and treatment".

The Institute uses dogs, mainly puppies, for tests. The puppies are then killed and their internal organs examined. As the Institute points out, all experiments are conducted under proper authorities and following all the relevant rules and regulations. Animal testing is only carried out when there are "no scientifically valid alternatives".

It also notes that both Health Canada and the US Food and Drugs Administration require "animal-tested protocols as proof-of-principle for efficacy and safety, before a new treatment can be used in human patients". So, I'm not sure how Ford's plan is going to work out.

There was a time when I would probably have applauded Ford's stance, and I would still applaud it in the case of cosmetics testing (Canada banned animal testing for cosmetics back in 2023). But as regards medical testing, my response is more muted and nuanced these days, now that my wife is suffering from an incurable neurodegenerative disease, and I have had several friends suffer from (and die from) various cancers and other medical conditions. As you get older your perspective changes.

The whole ethical issue of animal testing is of course a fraught one, and nothing like as simple and black-and-white as Ford makes it sound. On one side, the sentience of animals, the unreliability of predicting human outcomes, and the availability (in some cases) of alternatives. On the other, the contribution to medical advances, the similarities of animal physiology and responses to humans', and the minimization of overall suffering.

And then, of course, you get into which animals are ethically appropriate for testing - worms and fruit flies, mice and rats, dogs and cats, monkeys and primates? And what the animals are used for - non-invasive interventions, deliberate disease transference, organ harvesting, stress-testing until death? And then you get into the number of animals involved, the number of humans who might benefit, the value of the end product for humans, the difficulty of measuring animal pain and distress, the conditions animals are kept in, etc etc. 

The general rule on animal testing is to observe the so-called "three r's": replacement (use non-animal alternatives wherever possible), reduction (use the fewest animals possible), and refinement (try to improve experimental methods, housing and care to minimize pain and distress). Commonsense stuff, but not really a solution to all those tricky ethical dilemmas. 

We use much fewer animals (especially mammals) in research than we used to. But, at some point in the development of new drugs or procedures, testing on animals is a necessary evil (subject to to rigorous protocols and review by ethics committees, of course). And, contrary to what Mr. Ford says, these are not people's pets; these are animals raised for the very purpose (maybe you think that makes it even worse, but it needn't be). And if we don't test on animals, then we would need to test more on people, which of course has even greater ethical challenges.

Then, there is the narrative that animal testing is useless anyway because animals are too different from humans. There is a statistic doing the rounds of the internet, especially since Doug Ford's announcement, that 90% of drugs ultimately fail in human trials following animal tests (usually attributed to an NIH research study). But this, it turns out, is highly misleading for a whole host of reasons, ably explained on the Understanding Animal Research website, not the least of which is that it doesn't include the 40% of potential new drugs that are withdrawn completely during pre-human animal tests. In fact, animal tests are very good at predicting whether a drug will be safe in human tests.

The ethics of animal testing is not for the faint of heart. Kudos, in some ways, to Ford for jumping into the fray. But I get the impression, at least from the language he uses, that he is maybe only looking at one side of the equation (the emotive side, rather then the scientific side; heart, not head). Just wait till he, or someone close to him, gets diagnosed with cancer...

Canadian study suggests that meat diet does nor cause cancer, it reduces it

A new study appears to fly in the face of the vast majority of previous studies that suggest a positive correlation between meat consumption and cancer and other serious health issues.

Most prior studies and meta-studies, like this large 2007 study, have concluded that "red and processed meat intake appears to be positively associated with risk of cancer of the colon and rectum, esophagus, liver, lung, and pancreas", although not other types of cancer. That's a pretty damning list, and this was a huge study of half a million Americans, published in PLoS Medicine journal (impact factor 9.9) and the US National Library of Medicine. 

It confirms what is now the conventional wisdom on the subject. The World Health Organization agrees with these findings, as does Harvard University's review of major US and European studies.

This new study, though, somehow "found no link between eating animal protein and higher death risk". In fact, it says, "higher animal protein intake was associated with lower cancer mortality, supporting its role in a balanced, health-promoting diet".

Wait, what? 

Now, this was a much smaller study (16,000 individuals), carried out by McMaster University in Canada, and published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism journal (which has a much lower impact factor of 2.6). But, still, how did they manage to come up with a finding so diametrically opposed to what masses of other studies have found?

If it was an American study, you might well conclude that Donald Trump or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might have been interfering. But this is a Canadian study.

Way down towards the end of the article, though, it is mentioned that the research was funded by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA), an advocacy group for American beef producers. Coincidence? It says the NCBA "was not involved in the study design, data collection, and analysis or publication of the findings". But you really have to wonder.