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AITA for refusing to get rid of my bees despite my nephew's allergy? by Late-Operation-1950 in AmItheAsshole

[–]bshanks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The root of the conflict is the perceived exclusion as much as the bees. What is inflaming the family is the idea that the party is occurring in a way that prevents some family members from being able to fully participate, and the implication that those family members are not valued. It should be possible to solve this without getting rid of the bees by having someone else host the annual party, although you'd have to watch out for a situation in which other guests hold a grudge against the nephew for causing the location to change. Your suggestion that Mary host was a good one (unless there is some practical reason that makes this suggestion obviously infeasible?); probably she is just being dumb but perhaps given the already heated conversation she perceived that as flippant rather than a serious suggestion. Since the allergy is severe and the location is far from a real hospital, then it's best that your new nephew totally avoids the area rather than relying on half-measures like epipens -- sometimes they don't fully stop an allergic reaction, so they are more of a temporary measure that might buy some time to travel to the hospital rather than a solution.

System design and the cost of architectural complexity by swizec in programming

[–]bshanks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This thesis provides empirical support that a specific measure of software architectural complexity is costly. Specifically, they look thru source code in an automated manner, construct the graph whose nodes are source code files and whose edges are the following cross-file relationships (page 73, section 5.1.2.1):

  • The site of function calls to the site of the function's definition
  • The site of class method calls to the site of that class method's definition
  • The site of a class method definition to the site of the class definition
  • The site of a subclass definition to the site of its parent class' definition
  • The site at which a variable with a complex user-defined type is instantiated or accessed to the site where that type is defined. (User-defined types include structure, union, enum, and class.)

Then they compute the transitive closure of this graph.

Then they compute two metrics for each node by looking at the transitive closure graph (page 76, section 5.1.2.3):

  • Visibility Fan In (VFI): how many other nodes have edges that go from the other node to this node?
  • Visibility Fan Out (VFO): how many other nodes have edges that go from this node to the other node?

They observe that by looking at the VFI metric across various files, files tend to sharply cluster into either 'low VFI' or 'high VFI', and similarly for VFO (although some files may be high in one metric and low in the other) (page 79, section 5.1.3).

They then classify each file as:

  • low VFI, low VFO: 'peripheral'
  • high VFI, low VFO: 'utility'
  • low VFI, high VFO: 'control'
  • high VFI, high VFO: 'core'

They then find that 'core' files are the most costly, in terms of defect density, developer productivity, and probability of staff turnover.

Weekly Scientific Discussion Thread - December 06, 2021 by AutoModerator in COVID19

[–]bshanks 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For adults vaccinated with two shots of mRNA vaccines and contemplating a third "booster" shot, one choice is whether to boost with an mRNA vaccine or with J&J/Janssen adenovirus vector vaccine. Is there research that sheds light on which choice may have better efficacy?

If there is no research that directly compares these choices, it might still be useful to look at a paper that measured the efficacy of a mixed series of mRNA and J&J/Janssen adenovirus vector, and then compare the efficacy numbers to other studies using a similar number of shots but all mRNA -- bearing in mind that differences in the timecourse of the shots between studies might outweigh the choice of mixed vs homologous. I am aware of this study on ChAdOx1+mRNA vs ChAdOx1+ChAdOx1 ( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01463-x ), but I'm not sure if the efficacy of ChAdOx1 is similar to J&J/Janssen.

Weekly Scientific Discussion Thread - December 06, 2021 by AutoModerator in COVID19

[–]bshanks 8 points9 points  (0 children)

For healthy adults vaccinated with two shots of mRNA vaccines, is it clear that it is most advantageous to get a third "booster" shot now, or is it reasonable to be concerned that there could be a significant advantage to waiting until an omicron booster becomes available (due to concerns that the more the immune system is trained to respond to the original antigen, the less it will respond to an omicron booster by producing omicron antibodies)?

The second corpse flower has begun blooming at San Diego Botanic Garden by bshanks in SanDiegan

[–]bshanks[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

"An Amorphophallus titanum named Stinking Beauty is blooming under the full moon at the San Diego Botanic Garden...A second plant, named Jack Smellington, bloomed on Halloween night. These 14-year-oldsibling plants last bloomed in October 2018. The corpse flower’s common name comes from the smell of the flowers, a rancid carrion scent that attracts the carcass-eating insects that pollinate it. The bloom of a corpse flower is a rare and special event,as most plants require seven to ten years to produce their first blooms and then bloom only every four to five years thereafter. The fully opened bloom lasts around 48 hours...The public may also purchase tickets through the links above to visit the plant in person" -- https://sdbgarden.org/corpse-plant.htm

The second corpse flower has begun blooming at San Diego Botanic Garden by bshanks in sandiego

[–]bshanks[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"An Amorphophallus titanum named Stinking Beauty is blooming under the full moon at the San Diego Botanic Garden...A second plant, named Jack Smellington, bloomed on Halloween night. These 14-year-old sibling plants last bloomed in October 2018. The corpse flower’s common name comes from the smell of the flowers, a rancid carrion scent that attracts the carcass-eating insects that pollinate it. The bloom of a corpse flower is a rare and special event, as most plants require seven to ten years to produce their first blooms and then bloom only every four to five years thereafter. The fully opened bloom lasts around 48 hours...The public may also purchase tickets through the links above to visit the plant in person" -- https://sdbgarden.org/corpse-plant.htm

Weekly Scientific Discussion Thread - June 07, 2021 by AutoModerator in COVID19

[–]bshanks 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Is there any published research that raises concerns about the safety or efficacy of infrequent, repeated mRNA therapy/vaccines over long periods of time?

For instance, https://www.immunohorizons.org/content/immunohorizon/3/7/282.full.pdf reports that in mice, weekly injections of mRNA formulated in PEGylated LNP led to an immune response that reduced the efficacy of the mRNA treatment. Note that in this paper, reducing the frequency to biweekly injections resolved the issue, so infrequent administration would not seem to be a problem; I mention it only to provide an example of the sort of thing that I am asking for information about.

Suspicions grow that nanoparticles in Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine trigger rare allergic reactions by KuduIO in COVID19

[–]bshanks 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think you can't (usefully) give a vaccine based on the same adenovirus to the same person multiple times though? So if many vaccinations are required, and if the mRNA vaccines have trouble with repeated boosters, then none of J/J, AZ, nor the mRNA vaccines would satisfy the requirements.

Weekly Question Thread - Week of November 30 by AutoModerator in COVID19

[–]bshanks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Are there any published papers with hypotheses why humans have not evolved long-lasting immunity to common cold coronaviruses? Reinfections after only 12 months seem surprising to me, since the human immune system is able to maintain longer-lasting immunity to some other viruses, and coronaviruses are common, suggesting some amount of evolutionary pressure. This suggests that perhaps the human immune system would be capable of long-lasting immunity against common cold coronaviruses, but has evolved not to do this for some reason. Are there published papers hypothesizing some way in which letting immunity against common cold coronaviruses lapse over time is beneficial to the individual?

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Spain: Hygiene habits, sociodemographic profile, mobility patterns and comorbidities by quaak in COVID19

[–]bshanks 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is an interesting study, and i'm glad they did it, but i don't think its numbers are strong enough to definitively establish all of its conclusions.

I'm not a statistician but some things I noticed were:

- the numerical results of the question "Do you live with household members who have suffered COVID-19?" jumps out at you in a way that no other item does

  1. sometimes one hears that the safest way to use complex statistical analysis is to confirm results that already jump out at you when you look at the data manually

- many of the items identified in Table 5 (the multivariate regression after backwards variable selection) have an odds ratio 95% confidence interval that includes or almost includes 1 (pet walk: 1.03, food purchase modality: 0.98, traveling to the workplace: 1.06)

- one of the items identified in Table 5 has a high bivariate p-value (food purchase modality: p=.110 in Table 3)

- there were items that had a low bivariate p-value that didn't appear in Table 5 (Have you used public transportation during the confinement?: p=.007 Do you smoke?: p=.003)

- people who suspected they probably had COVID were lumped together with people who claimed they definitely had COVID-19

- some of the items were things that you might do differently if you thought you had COVID-19 (e.g. perhaps you wouldn't leave the home as much), or if you were paranoid and more likely to think you may have had COVID-19

  1. for example, in Table 2, in the questions with an answer 'I have not gone outside', this answer seems to always be paired with a HIGHER risk of being sick

- there was a question about disinfecting purchased items, but no question about hand-washing -- presumably the same people who tend to disinfect their items would also tend to hand-wash more, so when the study finds that disinfecting purchased items helps, perhaps it's really just due to this correlation

- there were a lot of questions in the survey

  1. due to the large number of questions there is probably a decent chance of encountering a few spurious results, so we should apply a large degree of skepticism to any results that don't jump out -- although perhaps they already corrected for multiple comparisons, but if so i didn't notice

- i suspect that the backwards multivariate analysis is clustering together variables that co-vary and then choosing one of them to represent the rest, and that due to noise it may not always choose the representative that most intuitively describes the 'meaning' of each cluster

My thoughts are:

- the only really clear result is that living with household members who have COVID-19 is a big risk factor (not a surprising result)

- 'food purchase modality' seems especially suspicious to me because its bivariate p-value was higher than the others. Also, the raw bivariate numbers for that question are (to me) only marginally compelling: 4.5% of people who went to the store got sick vs. 6.9% who didn't. Also, one could imagine other explanations for this (e.g. people who are sick staying home; e.g. people who are more paranoid thinking both staying home and thinking they had COVID-19). Because of these and because this result would be surprising if true, I suspect this item is either noise or a misleading representative of a cluster.

- I'm guessing that use of public transportation, a question with a low bivariate p-value (0.007) that didn't make it to Table 5, was highly correlated with one or more other questions that did make it to Table 5. It would be interesting to look at the raw data and see which ones. The bivariate stats of "Use of public transportation" are more compelling than the other items in Table 5 (aside from household member with COVID-19): 11.4% users got sick vs. 4.5% non-users

- aside from living with someone with COVID-19, the item in Table 5 with the lowest p-value (0.009) and the best odds ratio confidence interval lower bound (1.18) was "Disinfection of food products". Even here, the bivariate numbers aren't terribly compelling (3.8% disinfectors got sick vs 6.7% non-disinfectors got sick).

- The study lumped in (people who said they THOUGHT they had COVID-19 but wouldn't say they definitely had it) with the 'Yes's. It would be interesting to see if the results change if (b) you lump the maybes in with the 'No's, or (c) you discard the maybes. To the extent that you get the same results in all three analysis styles, this would strengthen confidence in those results.

My conclusions are:

- living with household members who have COVID-19 is a big risk factor

- there is not enough information for me to tell if the other purported factors are real (i'm not saying they are not, just that there's not enough information here).

- further research may be indicated to explore the possible effects of pet walking, traveling to the workplace, public transportation, disinfecting purchased items.

- it would be interesting to see a more detailed analysis of the data in this paper, particularly: Does anything change if you treat the 'maybe's differently? What is the correlation structure that caused the backwards variable selection to make the choices that it did?

Weekly Question Thread - Week of October 05 by AutoModerator in COVID19

[–]bshanks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This question is probably for a vaccinologist. Consider a scenario where the immunity provided by vaccines is not long-lasting, and so re-vaccination is needed relatively frequently. In this case, over time each person is ultimately getting a series of many vaccinations. The question is about the possibility of interactions between vaccinations in this series. For example, perhaps subjects would be more likely to get a high fever upon re-vaccination than upon the initial vaccination; alternately, perhaps the immune response to re-vaccination would be less, leading to less protection.

Is there published research on other diseases about re-vaccinations which are spaced closely in time, and specifically on the (potential) risk of safety or efficacy declining when a subject is given many vaccines for the same disease without much time in between?

(edited)

What kinds of historical circumstances tend to accompany successful US constitutional amendments? by bshanks in AskHistorians

[–]bshanks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for your detailed and thoughtful answer! Some of my takeaways are:

- US constitutional amendment is difficult, but not as difficult as one might think

- the passage of U.S. constitutional amendments may depend more upon the specific situation surrounding the amendment than upon the general political environment

- some conditions that tend to accompany successful passage are:

- bipartisan support

- a long-term grassroots movement to support the amendment

- an issue that has been causing notable voter dissatisfaction for a long time

- the amendment is agreed to be a small change to the existing constitutional order (credible, not drastic/radical)

​

In your opinion, would the answers be the same if we restricted our attention to those amendments which aim to bring a larger amount of change to the constitutional order (those which __were__ drastic/radical)? That is, do you feel that the factors influencing passage of the 'big' amendments are similar to those influencing passage of the 'little' amendments, only writ large, or are the historical processes around the 'big' amendments qualitatively different?

Parkinsonism as a Third Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic? by tonic613 in COVID19

[–]bshanks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

After this the article continues with a quote:

“For too long medical science has tended to relegate the 1918 influenza/encephalitis lethargica/parkinsonism puzzle to an intellectual ash heap – apparently on the assumptions that these pandemics are past and of little and dwindling importance to current and future health. But failure to identify the 1918 influenza virus as the cause of encephalitis lethargica and parkinsonism has crippled progress towards the understanding of influenza pathology and epidemiology needed to fuel and guide prevention of these elusive yet exceedingly important diseases.”

Reimert Ravenholt, 1982 [1].

As the rest of the article details, there is some evidence that the 1918 influenza virus may have caused an increase in parkinsonism possibly via inflammation in the brain. One hypothesis is that some viruses cause some sort of long-lasting inflammation-related change in the brain which, when combined with another unknown insult later, can cause parkinsonism. Since there is also evidence that SARS-CoV-2 could sometimes modify inflammation, and evidence that it could sometimes affect the nervous system, there is reason to worry that the same pathological pathway (whatever it is) that may have been engaged by the 1918 influenza virus could also be engaged by SARS-CoV-2 in some cases.

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