Interesting Links for 05-01-2025

[andrewducker]

1. "Love is Blind" contestants are employees, Labor Board says

(tags:games employment law USA TV )

2. A Key Brain Difference Linked to Autism Is Found for the First Time in Living People

(tags:autism brain )

3. What happens when the UK holds a public inquiry?

(tags:UK politics disaster OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

Regarding #3, it amazes me how, at least in UK, nothing ever happens to the responsible bureaucrats.

As I heard once from a petty bureaucrat in the USSR: "my responsibility means I answer questions from my managers".

[mountainkiss]

And yet this one?

[andrewducker]

"examined brains from children with autism who had died from other causes"

This one is the first study from living people.

(Which you'd think would probably give the same results, but I assume they wanted to be sure.)

[mountainkiss]

I’m just surprised they’re so directly opposed. There’s a decade or more between them as well, so research methods have presumably changed significantly.

[andrewducker]

Ah, gotcha.

Yeah. Hopefully something that will result in further study that clears things up more. Eventually.

[andrewducker]

But fundamentally we're back to the idea that there are multiple things with similar symptoms, and that we're only just starting to differentiate them.

[mdlbear]

Interesting, but it's a pretty small sample, and using PET with ₁₁C, with a 20-minute half-life, doesn't exactly scale.

[bens_dad]

Ah a plausible difference in brain structure, but quite possibly nowhere near the root cause. Is the difference in synapse building, the triggering mechanism or the process that generates the trigger ?

I am not very comfortable with filling brains with radio isotopes repeatedly to try to map brain development.

I suppose that a short half-life is good as long as it isn't too short for the measurements.

[bens_dad]

Is there any relationship between synapse branching and density ?
If so do more branches increase or decrease density ?