1 Week, 7 Stories #68
Fish sticks, SCIFs, and new humanoids on the block
Every edition features 7 stories from the past week. I’ll draw on my background in media, journalism, agriculture, biotech, and renewable energy to come up with an interesting selection and to offer some context.
In one of my communications roles in the biotech sector I had my genome sequenced by several direct-to-consumer companies including Navigenics, deCODE, Ancestry.com, and 23andMe one of the pioneers in consumer genetic testing. Navigenics folded, deCode was bought out, and now 23andMe may be disappearing and with it my genetic data.
Last week the Attorney General of California issued a consumer alert to customers of 23andMe saying the company was in “financial distress” and that there was substantial doubt as to whether it could carry on. The alert went on to suggest ways that customers could delete their genetic data and revoke certain permissions. By the weekend, the company had filed for bankruptcy and its co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki resigned. Last November, a media release from the company said it was re-structuring, but that turned out to not be enough to overcome its problems.
So where is my genetic data?
As an early adopter and because I used it as a communications tool to help explain genetic testing and all my raw data and subsequent consumer-oriented reports since then are on my computer. However, that data and even my original ‘spit kit’ is still with 23andMe. How that will be handled seems to be a bit murky. According to an ABC News report, in the U.S. at least, the privacy laws governing electronic health records and your doctor’s records do not protect “information that you gave freely to a private company.’
Direct-to-consumer tests are exactly what they seem to be. They are genetic testing services sold directly to people looking for information to help them in ancestry research or for health reasons. Once you lay down your money you have an exhaustive amount of privacy information to wade through that comes with an important caveat: You may not like the information you receive. For instance, you might come across health risks that frighten you, or in the case of ancestry data discover that one of your parents or relatives are not quite who you thought they were. Once you are clear on the risks and agree to the terms and conditions, you receive the testing kit that calls for either a cheek swab or spitting into a vial. I had to do my spit kit on camera for a local TV station and you would be surprised how fast your mouth can become dry! Then come your results and ongoing reports. Mine had no surprises though it did suggest I would have early male pattern baldness which has still not happened.
With the demise of 23andMe the question of genetic privacy is once again in the spotlight because the company was one of the first and one of the biggest. If you are a customer, check the California AG link in the first paragraph of this story and follow its advice.
Warning- creepy time ahead.
A story in TechCrunch says that a Norwegian startup company plans on putting test versions of its humanoid robots in homes by the end of this year. 1X is the name and “your personal assistant and companion” is the aim. Like something out of science fiction, the company says its Neo Gamma robot needs to “live and learn among us” and the company’s website features robots vacuuming the house (with a Dyson vacuum by the way) and washing windows.
But as an article in Quartz this week suggests, the world may not be ready for a helping hand from humanoids. The argument in favour of humanoid design is that our world is built around the human form so if we want to put robots to work for everyday tasks they need to live in that world. The counter argument is that it is preferable to adjust our world to incorporate simpler machines. (that are likely cheaper and less prone to failure)
The robots that are being marched out so far are clumsy compared to real life biological units such as you and me but that is not getting in the way of investment. Meta is working on the “Android of androids” and Agility Robotics is heavily into humanoid robots for the workplace. We’re familiar with videos of industrial size robots working in automobile assembly factories, but Mercedes-Benz is adding humanoid style robots to the mix and after ‘training’ from Mercedes’ employees they are able to work autonomously.
The times they certainly are a ‘changin and the CEO of NVIDIA said this month that the “humanoid robot revolution is closer than you think”. For a rundown of the top humanoid robots in use right now, the Built In tech website may surprise you with just how much we are changing.
I’ll start this story off by saying why would we want to remember being a baby. Let’s face it, those first couple of years are a bit messy and weird.
With that in mind, researchers from Yale University believe they have the answer to why we recall little from those early years. According to a media release from the University, the previous theory was that our still developing brains cannot encode those infant memories. In a research article published this month in Science, the researchers put forward a new theory for what is dubbed ‘infantile amnesia’.
When an infant sees an image for the first time their hippocampus (the region of the brain which stores memories) is more active. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with awake infants they were able to conclude that as early as three months of age we are tucking away memories. There are different factors that may be at play as to why we lose them. In our early years “statistical memory” is more important to help us learn about our environment and learn language and concepts. “Episodic memory” about specific events comes later. That episodic memory simply may not be converted into long-term memory. The researchers also believe that some of those memories may still be there, and it is just a question of accessing it. A Scientific American article about the study explains it in search terms we might be more familiar with – it is a mismatch between how the information was stored and the search terms our adult brains use to retrieve the information.
I for one am quite content to leave some bits buried in my neural filing system.
We may be facing another battle in the war of wills between Canada and the United States so brace yourself.
Who invented the fish stick?
I heard a podcast from the St. John’s Morning Show about William Hampton, the first president of the Marine Institute at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1964. The Institute is celebrating its Centennial Anniversary and according to the podcast and Memorial’s website he was awarded the patent for the fish stick in 1955. At that time, he was working at General Seafoods in Halifax where he and an assistant developed a method for freezing large units of fish which could then be cut into sticks, deep fried, and frozen again.
I did not know Canada was home to such a basic staple of North American freezers so decided to dig a little further.
Quartz magazine said in a 2022 story about fish sticks that they were the invention of frozen food pioneer Clarence Birdseye and marketed by the U.S based frozen food company, Birds Eye. They made their way to the U.K. in 1955 as fish fingers.
Sorry to say that the more I read about the history of these breaded bits of fish, the less likely it seems that Canada can take credit for bringing it to market for the first time.
That’s does not mean there is not a Canadian connection.
William Hampton does appear to have been granted a patent, but it also seems that Clarence Birdseye got his inspiration while on assignment with the United States Agriculture Department in Labrador in 1912. According to Rigby’s Encyclopedia of the Herring (yes there is such a thing), Birdseye learned how to ice fish from the local Inuit and saw how fish froze quickly at -40C and that when thawed, the fish had kept its texture and flavour. Canada also had a hand in its marketing success by subsidizing processing plants and the building fishing boats and supported food processing technology. When the Trans-Canada Highway opened in 1962 (it was not completed until 1971) transporting frozen fish sticks across the country helped ensure its national availability.
Whether you have a hankering for fish sticks in North America or fish fingers or herring savouries in the UK or dress them up with hot sauce or ketchup, chances are you have some of “the ocean’s hot dogs” in your freezer.
Enjoy, and let the war begin over who really can take credit for their invention.
I am not going to wade into the politics of the SignalGate scandal taking up the headlines and grinding down the gears of the White House spin machine, but in a world of hackers and high tech eavesdropping there is one aspect of the incident worth an extra look.
Namely a SCIF or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. A functional real life version to replace the Cone of Silence used in the spy spoof TV series and movie, Get Smart. You would need to be of a certain age to get the reference but suffice to say that the Cone of Silence and its portable version were meant to keep classified conversations, well, classified.
The Washington Post wrote about SCIFs in 2023, but in light of SignalGate updated its article this week. The SCIF is a secure room or compartment for top-level officials. Computers and cell phones are not allowed in and the communications technology inside the SCIF is designed to meet government security requirements and to be hack proof. When they are located in government buildings in the U.S. and abroad, they usually have high levels of physical security, much like a panic room. However a soundproof and secure SCIF can, and are, built into the home of officials and politicians who need to communicate at a high security level. SCIF Global Technologies will even build one in your own home or office if you feel the urge and provide consulting services to help maintain secure communications. Something which the Michael Waltz ‘Houthi PC small group’ could easily have used and or read about if they had really wanted.
SCIFs have been around for decades and as far back as 1988 they were used by government, the military, defence contractors, and even high level real estate brokers. The Center for Development of Security Excellence has self-directed courses for government SCIF users which starts out with this overview:
“Because the United States Government has placed its trust in you, you have been given access to SCI. Whether you’ve had access to SCI for a long time or just received it in the past year, you know that when you protect SCI, you are protecting our nation’s security along with the war fighters defending the American way of life.”
It is probably fair to assume that national security adviser Michael Waltz and his Signal chat group skipped that part of the get-to-know-your-new-job day at the office.
The downside of a SCIF is that you need to be physically present near one and sadly cannot play with social media at the same time, nor can you access a SCIF on the hands-free equipment in your car. JD Vance was apparently in Michigan, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth was travelling in Indo-China, and Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow (he claims he had no access to his personal devices until he returned from his trip).
Judging by the high school nature of the chat about a very serious issue, the participants had read the 21 Signal Hidden Tips & Tricks You Should Know but did not take to heart the motto of SCIF Global Technologies, “Results. Not Excuses”.
There is a new kid on the paleontological block thanks in part, to an associate professor at the University of Calgary. Darla Zelenitsky was part of a team of researchers working in the Gobi Desert in 2012 when they found the remains of a therizinosaur. As you may have learned from past newsletters, science can move exceedingly slow when it comes to verifying and announcing discoveries and the results of this find were only published this week in iScience.
One of the factors that may have slowed down the process is that only a partial skeleton was recovered because it was unearthed during the construction of a water pipeline and the team had both time constraints and a limited search area. What was recovered intact however, were two complete hands and a preserved claw which proved to be unusual and needed further study and confirmation. Therizinosaurs were dinosaurs that lived 90 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. They are sometimes referred to as giant sloths that walked on two legs, had a long neck, small head, long arms, and usually three fingers with three claws. This new find only had two fingers and claws so is a new species that has been dubbed Duonychus. It probably weighed about 260 kg (570 lbs) and was about 3 metres (10 feet) tall.
The Gobi Desert in Mongolia is considered one of the planet’s richest areas for dinosaur fossils, in particular for the Cretaceous Period, however illegal excavation and poaching is becoming a problem.
According to a National Geographic story when the team made the new find one of the researchers said his first reaction was “holy crap”.
Good to know that even seasoned paleontologists can still get excited about new discoveries. “
And speaking of new kids on the block, the neighbourhood around Saturn is experiencing a population boom.
This month, astronomers confirmed that 128 more moons have been identified orbiting Saturn. The small moons were spotted by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (located on a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaiʻi). Now that these new moons have been confirmed by the International Astronomical Union it brings Saturn’s official count to 274 natural satellites.
They are classified as "irregular moons," meaning they were captured by Saturn during its formation rather than forming in the planet's orbit like our own moon. It is believed the Earth’s moon was “born out of destruction” when something – perhaps as large as Mars - crashed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago and hurled molten and vaporized debris back out into space. The debris then coalesced into a single orbiting moon. Our humble man-in-the-moon is the 5th largest in the solar system behind Ganymede (Jupiter), Titan (Saturn), Callisto (Jupiter), and Io (Jupiter) and is considerably larger than any of the newly confirmed moons of Saturn. There have been 111 missions to the moon (with and without crews) since 1966 and only 62 of those were successful. If you pull out the numbers for missions with people on board, there is a 98% success rate because we take fewer risks with human cargo.
We won’t be visiting any of Saturn’s new moons any time soon and with our current track record of successful missions to our own moon, don’t expect any human footprints on Mars this decade – no matter what Elon Musk tells us.
I really enjoy these stories for the week Mike! Thanks for the great writing!