Typhoons in Taiwan 🌪️

After the intense Typhoon Champi, everything finally seems to be returning to normal as of Sunday. Phew - This one was really no joking matter. 💨

Hope everyone is doing fine. Though I have heard some quote unquote "trends", on typhoons from Taiwanese locals that I made me do a quick search.

｡𖦹°‧ Some have pretty good scientific backing behind them that I thought it would be interesting to share :

1. Typhoons that come after the summer months (June/July/Aug/Sept) tend to be bigger and more dangerous.

Interestingly, there is quite a bit of evidence behind this. A 2025 paper outlines the mechanism and mentions that in autumn, typhoons travel more equatorward and encounter more favourable ocean sub-surface conditions for intensification. Compared to summer, the thermodynamic disequilibrium between the ocean surface and the lower atmosphere is more prominent.

1. In recent years, the Typhoons have been coming later in the year than before.

There seems to be a dispute over this as:

A 2023 paper identifies a significant seasonal advance of intense typhoons since the 1980s in most tropical oceans, with earlier-shifting rates of 3.7 and 3.2 days per decade for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively.

Another 2025 paper finds a significant delay of the typhoon season in China, shifting later at a rate of 5 to 8 days per decade over the satellite era 1979−2023. 

∘ ∘ ∘ ( °ヮ° ) ?

👀 We know that El Niño plays a big role in typhoons. And given the Super El Niño this year with all the Indonesian forest fires, I guess its not a surprise that this year’s typhoons are also stronger it's a grim outlook. I guess my only other questions is: how much did global warming play a role in this? or are they more independent climate change? 🌧️

Lidia Poët & measuring criminals' skulls

I've been watching The Law According to Lidia Poët on Netflix. In season 2 episode 3, a serial killer is murdering women in Turin.

Lidia meets a famous professor Cesare Lombroso, who claims he can identify criminals by the shape of their skulls. Of course, he thinks Lidia an intellectual inferior, and has full confidence in his theories.

Without any spoilers: basically someone has taken Lombroso's theories to the extreme, and is killing off women who purportedly are inclined to criminality – based on their skulls.

Did some digging, and Cesare Lombroso was indeed a real person, who had those theories (that skull characteristics are associated with criminal behaviour).

In fact, here's one of his papers: “Illustrative Studies in Criminal Anthropology”, from 1891.

For today's eyes, it’s a strange read.

Lombroso doesn't just talk about skulls – he says "born criminals" have distinguishable walks, gestures, sense of smell, taste, and other characteristics (compared to "occasional criminals").

An excerpt:

Walk.– A study which I have made with Perachia, shows us that, contrary to the case of normal men, the step of the left foot of criminals is generally longer than that of the right; besides they turn off from the line of the axis more to the right than to the left; their left foot, on being placed on the ground, forms with this line an angle of deviation more pronounced than the angle formed by their right foot ; all these characteristics are very often found among epileptic

He attributes this distinction to natural selection.

I encourage you to scan through the paper. Strange, but fascinating.

The Netflix episode presents a thought experiment: if we knew someone would commit a crime, is it moral to take pre-emptive action? As we know, Lombroso's theories didn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. So the answer is of course "the killer was wrong and an extremist". And if you could predict someone's future behaviour? Well that's explored in Minority Report and other stories!

The Time a Futurama Writer Devised a Whole New Math Theorem for an Episode

In Futurama’s season 6 episode “The Prisoner of Benda,” the crew ends up using a futuristic device to switch minds with each other. Over the course of the episode, everyone’s minds get thoroughly shuffled up. This would be simple to fix, but there’s a catch: two people who’ve already switched brains can’t do so again. So you’ll probably need new, un-switched people to untangle it all, but how many?

As the gravity of the situation sinks in, the Professor – in Bender’s body, naturally – utters one of my favourite lines of the series: “I’m afraid we need to use... math!”

Futurama | We'll Need to Use....Math!

But the episode was written by mathematics PhD-holder Ken Keeler, who actually devised a proof that forms the solution in the episode. While Keeler has been keen to downplay it, it has since become known as Keeler’s Theorem or the Futurama Theorem, and has been published in an academic journal.

Keeler’s Solution

Ken Keeler’s solution uses group theory to solve the problem. In particular, it uses the S_n symmetric group, with n being the number of people involved. The group basically collects the number of permutations that can be done on n elements. For his solution, he needed n + 2 elements – with two new people – so the group becomes S_n+2.

You can read the paper for the full mathematical details – “k-cycles” and all – but the basic idea is simple. You split the original bodies into two groups, all elements up to some person i, and then all the rest from i + 1 to n. Then, you go through the first part, switching each person with the first new element, x – since x is new, these switches have never happened before. For the remaining people (i + 1 onwards) you switch them each with y. Finally, you switch x with i + 1 and y with 1.

This makes everything almost right, with the exception that you may need to switch x with y right at the end. However, this works because they’ve never switched in this process.

The paper referenced above finds some cases you can solve with fewer additional people, and other authors have since worked to generalise the solution for bigger and more complicated mixtures. Not only did Keeler solve a legitimate mathematical problem, it even inspired mathematicians to take it further.  

Mushrooms being a PARASITE to another mushroom?? 🍄 Zombie Mushroom

Today I learnt something new again from @BlackForager : Mycoparasitism

While its common knowledge that mushrooms most often grow on old decaying wood/matter. I never knew mushrooms could take over other mushrooms and still be edible??

Alexis introduces Shrimp of the Woods a.k.a. Zombie Mushroom in her new short.

The two fungi here are Entoloma abortivum and Armillaria. Previously it was not known which mushroom was overtaking which until Scientists used transcriptomics to find out more about this parasitic relationship.

They found that E.abortivum is responsible for the parasitic relationship and causes the zombie-like shape, carpophoroids. They found strongly upregulated E. abortivum transcripts in the carpophoroid tissue encoded oxalate decarboxylases - enzymes that degrade oxalic acid.

Zombie Mushroom 🧟 Shrimp of the Woods!

Interstellar's realistic black hole

In the movie Interstellar, it's well known that they used sophisticated physics to generate the visuals – including eliciting the help of Nobel laureate Kip Thorne.

Cool fact: they also published a paper describing the physics model they used: Gravitational lensing by spinning black holes in astrophysics, and in the movie Interstellar.

From the sounds of it, they did tweak a few aspects (straying from the actual physics) to make the final visuals work for the movie, which is understandable. But you got to commend the effort, and most would agree the final product is pretty amazing.

Arsenic in Brown and White Rice

I recently added more rice into my diet and wanted to understand the nutritional value of switching from white to brown rice. Then I recalled hearing about the potential risk of more arsenic so I dug into the research.

This 2016 risk assessment from the FDA provided baseline numbers of the amount of arsenic in rice and rice products as well as a quantitative estimate of lung and bladder cancer risk from long-term exposure of these products.

We found that average concentrations of inorganic arsenic – the more toxic form of arsenic – were as follows:

• 92 parts per billion (ppb) in white rice

• 154 ppb in brown rice

• 104 ppb in infants’ dry white-rice cereal

• 119 ppb in infants’ dry brown-rice cereal

The primary culprit of damage is inorganic arsenic in foods, which I learned in not a traditional heavy metal but a "toxic metalloid". The good news is this means inorganic arsenic doesn't bioaccumulate the same way other heavy metals do. The risk however is still continuous exposure over a long period of time which can damage DNA, the skin, and the vascular system.

Dr. Michael Greger also provides a good summary and insights in his video

Which Rice Has Less Arsenic: Black, Brown, Red, White or Wild?Evaluating differences in rice, we can observe:

• brown rice contains more arsenic than white rice

• long grain contains more than shorter grains, though this may be due more to where these grains are grown

• arsenic accumulates in the rice bran, which is why brown rice contain so much more arsenic

• many of the varieties of colored rice were worse than white rice for the reason above

• children under 6 should almost definitely avoid rice AND rice products, with regulations in the EU now adding more conservative limits on the amount of acceptable arsenic in rice products for infants

One bit of good news is brown rice MAY make the arsenic less bio-available as shown in this population study. As Dr. Greger says:

So, if you test the urine of thousands of Americans who don’t eat rice at all, they’re still peeing out about eight micrograms of toxic, carcinogenic arsenic a day. It’s in the air; it’s in the water; there’s a little bit in nearly all foods. But, eat just one food—a cup or more of white rice a day—and your exposure shoots up 65%.

Okay. But, what about those who eat a cup or more a day of brown rice, which technically contains even more arsenic? Your exposure shoots up the same 65%. No difference between the urine arsenic levels of white rice-eaters compared to brown rice-eaters. Now, this was not an interventional study, where they feed people the same amount of rice to see what happened, which would have been ideal. This was a population study. So, maybe the reason the levels are the same is that white rice-eaters eat more rice than brown rice-eaters. So, that’s why they ended up with the same levels? We don’t know, but it should help to put the minds of brown rice-eaters at rest.

So what is the risk? This analysis from the EPA used a Bayesian approach to estimate the dose response of inorganic arsenic exposure from water. It found a linear relationship of more arsenic exposure with bladder and lung cancer. If we extrapolate the EPA's 2025 upper-bound estimate: one daily cup of brown rice for life adds up to 0.42 percentage points of bladder or lung cancer risk (+5.5% relative to a 7.6% baseline); white adds 0.25 (+3%). At three cups: 1.45 (+19%) for brown and 0.8 (+10%) for white.

A more direct causal study would need to prove out this relationship, but this definitely took me aback. For rice staple cultures, three cups of rice daily is pretty normal. These upper bound figures begin to look similar to increased risk of cancer from a daily beer or alcoholic drink.

Unfortunately rinsing rice does little to remove arsenic, especially in brown rice. But researchers did find a parboil method could dramatically reduce the amount of arsenic, removing 54% & 73% iAs from brown & white rice. This is a specific method that requires a lot water that is then tossed out but it does retain a lot of the same nutrients.

My takeaway? We are exposed to arsenic across a number of ways; through our air, water, and food. The increased cancer risks are linear from continued exposure, which means the amount of arsenic consumption scales with risk. If I was a regulatory body in a country where rice is a staple food, I would set significantly stricter regulations to evaluate and limit the amounts in rice and rice products.

Personally, it doesn't seem worth eating rice regularly, especially brown rice. I'll probably try to have less than 3 to 4 servings a week and mix in other grains. I'd be especially careful with infants and rice products that may concentrate the arsenic levels.

Claim: Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Originally Came from a Lab Leak

Verdict: False and very misleading

“Clearly, [the] COVID-19 pandemic and many other global pandemics that we have, have come from gain of function research. The RSV epidemic that we have – that's the biggest killer of kids in this country today – came from these kinds of [gain of function] experiments.”

– RFK Jr

RFK Jr: Lyme Disease, RSV, Covid-19 "Almost Certainly" Created By Gain-of-Function Research - And U.S.…

RFK Jr. has had some strange ideas about RSV since at least 2021, and in August he mentioned it on both CNN and Fox News. In both cases, he pointed the finger at “gain-of-function” research for creating the virus, suggesting that it was created in a lab leak.

The RSV Lab Leak Hypothesis

As usual, RFK Jr.’s public comments don’t offer much detail. But as Tom Bartlett notes in an Atlantic article, RFK explains his theory in his book The Real Anthony Fauci, and cites an article written for Children’s Health Defense.

This article covers many aspects of the true history of the disease, but leaves out crucial details and – in the process – lurches towards a misleading conclusion.

The True Story of RSV

The true story of RSV is basically how the article describes it. In 1955, chimpanzees at the Walter Reed Army Institute for Medical Research came down with a mysterious respiratory illness, which the researchers called chimpanzee coryza agent (CCA). They also infected other chimps to prove it was transmissible. However, one worker who spent a lot of time with the chimpanzees also got sick, and it also infected his barrack-mates.  

More research came quickly, as an identical virus was isolated from children with respiratory illnesses, and the virus itself was characterised and tested in tissue cultures. Scientists eventually combined CCA with the identical viruses found in humans, under the name RSV.

This is all basically in line with the blog post RFK Jr. cites. However, RFK Jr. and the post he’s citing mistake this as the origin of the virus itself, when in fact it was simply when we first discovered it.

The Evidence They Ignore

Firstly, the initial wave of research found that 80% of healthy children in the state already had an antibody to it by age 4. However, later studies make it unavoidably clear. Working with historical samples, researchers confirmed a case of what we now call RSV dating back to 1931. This is 25 years before the supposed “lab leak.”

Research Reveals a Surprising Anti-Alzheimer’s Effect of Eggs

A recent study looked at links between different environmental exposures and Alzheimer’s risk, based on a sample of around 500,000 people in the UK. Oddly, consuming eggs had one of the strongest protective effects out of everything covered in the study. But is this just an odd result, or does something as simple as eating eggs really have a protective effect?

Eggs Consistently Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk in Studies

Based on available research, it really does seem like egg consumption is associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer's and cognitive decline. Firstly, the UK-based study had a huge sample size, so it’s pretty compelling on its own, suggesting a 76% increase in risk for people who never ate eggs.

But that is far from the only result:

• A 2024 study followed 1,024 older adults over 6.7 years on average, and analysed their risk based on their egg consumption at baseline. The results showed that consuming more than one egg per week was associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s, 47% lower than people who ate less than one egg per week.

• A 2026 study used a large cohort of Seventh-day Adventists in the US, looking at a sample of 39,498 people (who were aged 65 or older during follow-up) over an average of 15.3 years. Risks decreased with greater egg consumption. For instance, there was a 17% reduction in risk for people who ate eggs once a month to once a week, and a 27% reduction for people who ate eggs five or more times a week, compared to people who never or rarely consumed eggs.

• A meta-analysis looking at 13 longitudinal and 8 cross-sectional studies on egg consumption found that consuming 1 egg per day was associated with a 9% decrease in the risk of cognitive decline. More precisely, the benefits peaked at 50 to 60 g of egg per day.

Why Are Eggs Good for Your Brain?

As well as containing omega-3 fatty acids, lutein, tryptophan, vitamin B12 and other potentially beneficial ingredients, many authors point to choline as a key factor. This essential nutrient is a precursor to acetylcholine, which is crucial for memory and synaptic function. Choline levels in the body have been independently linked to changes in cognitive function with aging and Alzheimer’s disease – so there are also other options if you don’t like eggs!

Spanking and Physical Punishment Effects on Children

I had a recent discussion with a friend on the effectiveness and/or trauma caused by physical punishments for misbehaviour for children. The most pointed to paper by articles and AI alike is this 2016 meta-analysis titled Spanking and Child Outcomes: Old Controversies and New Meta-Analyses. It provides the best view on corporal punishment effects and effect sizes while differentiating between spanking/light physical punishments and what would be deemed abusive behavior. The paper reviewed two concerns about the existing research:

1. Spanking Has Been Confounded With Harsher Forms of Physical Punishment

2. Spanking Has Only Been Linked With Negative Child Outcomes in Cross-Sectional or Methodologically Weak Studies

By coding the the types of physical punishments, the meta-analysis removed abusive behavior from the analysis and built bivariate links; relationships between spanking and one single outcome. It compared more spanking, less spanking, and in some studies no spanking. By coding papers based on type like cross sectional vs longitudinal, it evaluated outcomes based on the study type. Its conclusion:

The meta-analyses presented here found no evidence that spanking is associated with improved child behavior and rather found spanking to be associated with increased risk of 13 detrimental outcomes. These analyses did not find any support for the contentions that spanking is only associated with detrimental outcomes when it is combined with abusive methods or that spanking is only associated with such outcomes in methodologically weak studies.

The detrimental outcomes are interesting to examine, a litany of issues with the biggest including being a victim of physical abuse, child mental health problems, and negative parent-child relationships.

Two other studies reinforce this finding. A 2021 review in the Lancet stated:

Our review of prospective longitudinal studies has shown that physical punishment is linked with increases in negative child outcomes. Many of these studies used statistical methods to minimise potential confounding and selection bias. The review has documented compelling evidence that physical punishment is harmful to children’s development and wellbeing and has shown no evidence that it is beneficial for children.

And this 2025 meta-analysis found similar results when examining studies focused on lower and middle income families. This controls for confounding factors like norms or socioeconomic factors.

It is not surprise that the read from AI on the matter is that overwhelming strength of evidence lies against physical punishments, often in line with UN calls to uphold children's human rights against this type of means of compliance.

That being said, I retain some skepticism on the results. As the 2016 meta-analysis pointed out:

parents’ use of spanking is not easily or ethically studied through an experimental design, as children cannot be randomly assigned to parents with varying predispositions to spank, nor can parents typically be randomly assigned to spank or not spank...The circumstances of experimentally manipulated spanking thus are likely to be unusual, leading to concern that experiments with parental spanking may suffer from a lack of external validity.

The study says their results show little reduction in negative outcomes when comparing weaker cross sectional studies against more powerfully designed prospective longitudinal studies but I find this reasoning limited because prospective longitudinal studies still lack the ability to control for some confounding factors like a child's baseline behavior. The directionality of outcomes and spanking is in my view still a question and not well controlled.

Coding of physical punishment was also largely self reported. I question the strength of this coding as the ambiguity between abuse and controlled punishment is not verified nor blinded.

Finally, a 2005 study controlled for cultural norms. In countries where physical punishment is more common, it found the negative outcomes dampened but still persistent. With examples like Singapore that still incorporate caning as a punishment means for extreme cases, I think the literature has gaps on how well managed punishment systems effect outcomes.

TLDR; My read

The evidence is clear that the higher end of physical punishment in terms of harshness and volume is strongly associated with negative outcomes for the child. And these observations persist across cultures and socioeconomics. The line between physical punishment and abuse is thin and I believe easily crossed. This is a two way bridge for the evidence, as I think that makes controlling for limited and well defined proportional physical punishment difficult to design and assess.

The 2016 meta-analysis was clear in its conclusion, but the majority of the evidence it examined was showing impacts of more spanking vs less spanking and wasn't designed to analyze spanking vs non-spanking. I think it is clear that at best physical punishments should be used as sparingly as possible if at all. However, I don't think its fair to say the evidence discounts any physical punishment as the ability to create experiments is infeasible. I'd also contend that that conclusion of no physical punishments is culturally loaded and invites societal bias and judgement. As a rule parents should exhaust other means of punishment first.

Patrick Jane lie detection through pulse-sensing

Patrick is "The Mentalist", who helps police solve murders.

The show aired between 2008-2015, and I just started watching it after seeing a few reels/clips on social media.

A logician rivalling Sherlock, plus the mentalism of course.

One skill Patrick frequently showcases is detecting lies by sensing changes in someone's pulse.

Obviously, the show takes (giant) liberties with Patrick's "skills". So I'm not expecting everything Patrick does to be "evidence-based".

But pulse-sensing seems believable to some degree, and I wanted to see what actual science may exist.

If you think about it, what Patrick is doing is basically administering a polygraph test (using his own natural devices). Of course, a polygraph test senses much more than a person's pulse or heart rate.

In any case, as a starting point, it seems instructive to ask "do polygraph tests work" (as lie detectors)?

That's exactly what this 2025 study examines.

It's a fascinating research paper. What the researchers did:

Dow, Jeu, and Watkins present the first published empirical analysis of polygraph reliability. Starting with the universe of cases where an individual was convicted and was subsequently exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence ... the Authors take advantage of a natural experiment that results from the conviction of individuals subsequently determined with near certainty to be innocent. By ascertaining which cases of the wrongfully convicted individuals included a polygraph examination, and by studying how those examinations were interpreted, then, because the individuals are now known to be innocent, the Authors were able to determine the reliability of these polygraph results (which were obtained before the actual innocence of the subjects was known).

And their conclusion?

polygraphs yield unreliable conclusions in approximately 50 to 65 percent of all cases-worse than a coin flip. This failure rate represents a reason for caution in all contexts where polygraph examinations are routinely used, including criminal investigations.

The study gives a few case studies:

Corey Batchelor insisted he had nothing to do with either the robbery or murder of Lula Mae Woods, who was found dead in 1989 in Chicago, Illinois. During their interrogation, police told Batchelor he had failed a polygraph exam. Confronted with this bogus claim, Batchelor confessed to a murder he did not commit. He served twenty-seven years before being exonerated.

Justin Black suffered a similar fate. In 2007, he was charged in West Virginia with the 2002 murder of Deanna Crawford. After maintaining his innocence from the outset, including during a polygraph examination, Black confessed to the crime after being told he had failed the exam. He served eleven years for a crime he did not commit before being officially exonerated in 2021.

In Nebraska, James Dean began to wonder whether he really might have been an accessory to the murder of Helen Wilson. Informed he had failed a polygraph and would face the electric chair if he did not come clean, Dean confessed to participating in a crime he had nothing to do with. He served five years before being exonerated in 2009.

Even a confession doesn't prove guilt.

So, all in all, not so good for Patrick Jane -- even if he could read pulses as good as a polygraph!