February 26, 2024: Baby gut microbiomes determine allergies later in life, ChatGPT could craft political ads tailored to individual personalities, and the life and times of "Vittrup Man." —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | The gut microbiomes of babies who later develop allergies or asthma look different from those of children who don't go on to have allergies. A study of more than 1,100 children found that the presence of certain harmless bacteria in an infant's gut primes the gut to allow other helpful bacteria to follow. If gut bacteria colonization is disrupted or delayed within the first year of life, kids are more likely to be diagnosed with eczema, food allergies, allergic rhinitis or asthma at age five.
How this works: Vaginal birth and breastfeeding impart vital bacteria into infants' gut microbiomes, as does exposure to germs in the first year of a baby's life. In general we're living more sterile lives–less time outside, more exposure to antibiotics and c-sections all disrupt the natural accumulation of bacteria in the gut.
What can be done: Multiple clinical trials are underway to test allergy treatments with "cocktails" of selected bacteria for kids. Avoiding unnecessary cesarean sections and antibiotics, and enacting policies that support breastfeeding could also help, says Supinda Bunyavanich, a pediatric allergist and immunologist at Mount Sinai in New York City. | | | Large language models like ChatGPT could soon help create political ads tailored to persuade different personalities, according to work by scientists at the University of Bristol. The researchers took a real political advertisement from Facebook promoting vaccines and used ChatGPT to rewrite the verbiage of the ad to suit different personality types. The new ads were rated by participants and found to be more persuasive than the original.
Why this matters: Generative AI tools like large language models could enable the scale-up of personality-targeted ads. "Whereas previously, manual targeting at market segments required extensive funding and knowledge, the availability of GenAI has dramatically lowered the cost. Political targeting is now cheaper and easier than ever before," write researchers Matthew Edwards, Almog Simchon and Stephan Lewandowsky.
What can be done: Efforts to regulate social media platforms will likely be met with fierce opposition, say the researchers. Media literacy education can help (I wrote about this last week), but misinformation is sticky and spreads quickly. Studies have shown that people who acknowledge their own biases and admit they don't know everything are more open-minded and resistant to dogmatism. | | | • Collaboration between Arctic researchers in Russia and the rest of the world has gone cold over the last two years. | 6 min read | | | • Sara Little Turnbull was a designer who worked at 3M during the 1950s and was instrumental in the development of the N95 mask. The company has downplayed her role in the invention. | 13 min listen | | | • "Vittrup Man," who was bludgeoned, left for dead in a Danish bog, and discovered some 5,000 years later, was a Scandinavian wanderer, according to a new analysis of his remains. | 3 min read | | | Vittrup Man's skull was shattered by at least eight blows. Photo: Stephen Freiheit Credit: From "Vittrup Man–The life-history of a genetic foreigner in Neolithic Denmark" by Fischer A, SjÃļgren K-G, Jensen TZT, Jørkov ML, Lysdahl P, Vimala T, et al, in PLoS ONE 19(2); February 14, 2024 (CC-BY 4.0) | | | • A new way to look for life in the cosmos other than looking for "habitable zones" on exoplanets may be to look for the "computational zones" of the universe, where physical conditions are conducive to RNA translation or the transmission of other information entirely, writes Caleb Scharf, senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Knowing the physical limits of computation, astronomers could map out potential new worlds, he says. | 5 min read | | | Here's a fun fact you can whip out at parties: Our bodies contain more bacterial cells than human cells. Most of those are good bacteria that we call commensals, and they help regulate the digestive tract and fend off dangerous pathogens. Microorganisms in our gut depend on the fiber in our diet to live, and in return they produce metabolites like short-chain fatty acids and they reduce inflammation. Babies need strong microbiomes, yes. But adults need to feed their own microbiomes, too. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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