Michael Zachariou

How can a person who brings so much knowledge, ability, focus, and intensity into the operating room be so nonchalant about how he has profoundly changed people’s lives? 👨‍⚕️ Bill Leider, a fellow Institute of Neuro Innovation board member, asks this question about the Institute's amazing founder and neurosurgeon (and Inner State, Inc. advisory member) Amir Vokshoor M.D. Read here for the thoughtful response... #purpose #neurosurgery #neurology #femalefounder

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Today is International Beer 🍺 Day and its a Friday!   Clay tablets indicate that brewing was a well-respected occupation in what is now Iran around the 5th millennium BC. But it’s thought that beer was already known to the Sumerians and Babylonians some 3,000 years before that.   Mesopotamia records the use of beer, and the drink has spread throughout the world; a 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem honouring Ninkasi, “Hymn to Ninkasi” the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer-recipe.   Tablets discovered in Syria dating back to 2500 BC indicate that the city of Elba produced a range of beers. It was quite common for female brewers to double up as priestesses and some beers were specially brewed for religious ceremonies.   The invention of bread and beer, some argue, caused humanity to develop technology and to build civilization.   One of the problems of early brewing was that beer didn’t keep well. This could be overcome to a certain degree by increasing the alcohol content.   In the 9th Century it was discovered that beer could be flavoured with hops. It was discovered that hopped beer lasted longer, introduced standard barrel sizes started the export trade in beer. These technological leaps meant beer was no longer a small scale cottage industry.   In England Ale and Beer brewers where two seperate groups of people. In fact beer brewers where in large immigrants from the Low Countries. Where it was forbidden for hops to be added to Ale, but not beer. This continued up up until the reign of James I in the 17th century. An it is why porter and stouts are classes as beer rather than ale.   In 1516 the Duke of Bavaria, William IV, introduced the Reinheitsgebot, or purity law. This was perhaps the first European food regulation and heavily restricted the ingredients of beer to water, barley, hops and nothing else. Wheat beers where a separate case and it never applied to export beers.   Yeast was only added to the list in 1857 after the French Louis Pasteur discovered the germ theory of fermentation.   The Reinheitsgebot was added to the German Statute Book after German unification in 1871. It was only finally repealed in 1987.   But what is the chemistry ⚗️ of Beer 🍺   #beer #beerindustry #foodhistory #foodscience #foodscienceandtechnology #science #chemistry #scienceandtechnology #sciencecommunication #Friday #fridayfun #beverageindustry #brewing #fridayfun #friday #infographic via Compound Interest | Chemistry infographics

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Biological sex is composed of a constellation of traits, of which there are at least 10 relevant markers. Because biology is beautifully diverse, none of them are binary. Sex, which refers to one’s biological characteristics, exists as a spectrum because intersex people exist. A person’s sex can be female, male, or intersex—which can present as a diverse range of biological combinations. Biological markers of sex include: 1. Chromosomes – Types of chromosomal expression. 2. Gonads – Organs that produce gametes (testes or ovaries). 3. Hormones –Types and level of hormone secretion, which vary within and across the sexes. 4. Secondary Sex Characteristics – Features that appear during puberty, but are not involved with reproduction. 5. External Genitalia – Genitals visible outside the body. 6. Internal Genitalia – Genitals present within the body. 7. Gametes – Reproductive cells in humans. 8. Gene Expression –Levels and types of gene expression. Genes dictate the proteins made by the body. Known genes that impact sex include SRY, DMRT1, Foxl 2, Sox9, Wnt4, and others.  9. Brain Structure – Brain structure characteristics (including the ratio of white matter to grey matter) and brain activation patterns vary by sex. 10. Hormone Receptor Sensitivity – The response to sex hormones can vary, depending on receptor sensitivity. Some individuals may be partially or completely insensitive to hormones, negating their effect. Of course, gender can’t be binary, because it is a personal identity and is socially constructed. Today, numerous scientific fields, including biology, endocrinology, physiology, genetics, neuroscience, and reproductive science, have confirmed that both sex and gender exist as a spectrum. Learn more at: https://lnkd.in/dBgZ8vd

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It is hard to see what activist investor Starboard’s objectives are vis a vis Pfizer. After years of indifferent leadership that focused on cost-cutting rather than innovation, Pfizer finally brought in Albert Bourla who seems to have re-invigorated the company, its science and its business development deal-making. He also literally saved the world through its effective vaccine, delivered within mind-bogglingly record time. After the vaccine was successful in doing what it was supposed to, Pfizer unsurprisingly saw a return to some of the revenue challenges caused by the pre-Bourla years of lack of innovation. Now comes Starboard with seemingly no understanding or plan, trying to rope in the pre-Bourla leadership. To no one’s surprise, Starboard was met with scepticism and ridicule - and Ian Read and Frank Amelio clearly and rapidly saw their return was unwelcome. Now it is time for Starboard to also head home and redirect their energies to things they actually understand. Please let Bourla get back to remaking Pfizer and to restoring its iconic position in the biopharma world. #pfizer #activistinvestors #biotech #innovation

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Do Gametes (Egg/Sperm) Create a Sex Binary? Science Says No. https://lnkd.in/gdbf_Atk Some people who don't understand that biological sex is created by a constellation of traits will ask, do gametes (egg/sperm) create a sex binary? The answer is that gametes cannot be used to create a sex binary in humans, because no gametes can be present along with ambiguous gonadal tissue. This third “undefined” possibility eliminates the possibility for a binary sex classification. Furthermore, gametes are well known to mix-and-match with other sex traits—commonly, chromosomes, genitals, sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics—making them one of multiple sex markers that in aggregate constitute a person’s sex as female, male, or a blend of both (intersex). Key Takeaways: 1. Gametes cannot be used to create a sex binary in humans, because no gametes can be present along with ambiguous gonadal tissue. 2. This third “undefined” possibility eliminates the possibility for a binary sex classification in humans. 3. Gametes are only one of multiple sex markers that in aggregate constitute a person’s sex as female, male, or a blend of both (intersex/undefined). 4. Other critical sex markers beyond gametes include but are not limited to gonads, genitals, chromosomes, sex hormones, and secondary characteristics. No sex marker, including gametes, present as a sex binary. https://lnkd.in/gdbf_Atk What questions or comments do you have about biological sex (or gender) spectrum? Ask them in comments below. #science #lgbtqia #lgbtqiacommunity #intersex

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This is a equation that is 1024 years old. Yup 1000 CE to be exact. A thousand years ago, brilliant minds like Al-Karaji forged such mathematical breakthroughs with nothing but quill, ink, parchment and pure intellect. Today, humanity is light-years ahead—armed with AI, quantum computing, and limitless data—but the real question is about us, individually. If they achieved such profound insights in the year 1000 CE, what's holding us back, with the world’s knowledge just a click away? The truth is, we’re too often coasting on the progress of the past, when we should be multiplying it. The real jaw-drop isn’t how far we (as humanity) has come, but how much further each of us individually should be by now. Each one of us. #Math #Humanity

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Illumina stock is down 4% today on a NASDAQ flat day so not unreasonable to think that investors are disappointed by the GRAIL spinout structure. My guess (🤪) is that there remained some hope that a buyer would appear (LabCorp is one rumor) and even if bought for $1, Illumina wouldn't have to fund the deal with the $1B. Illumina would have to borrow that, interest rates are high, would lower profitability, stock sinks. BUT just found this beauty - https://lnkd.in/gqTvt3AG This doc has all sorts of fun stuff in it. First and foremost it has a number of references to a PIPE funding, and say that Illumina will only have to pay the balance of the $1B that is not provided by a PIPE. A PIPE is a Private Placement in a Public Equity meaning Illumina will try to sell some GRAIL stock to institutional investors (like BlackRock), potentially at a discount, to make them want to buy it from Illumina, not in the open market once it's trading. Bit of a hail mary IMO given the situation but I guess worth a try, better than using Illumina's own money... Kind of mean to call it "Disposal Funding" 🥲: "At or prior to the Effective Time, Illumina shall...contribute to GRAIL an amount in cash (a) the “Disposal Funding” less (b) the sum of (i) any cash held by GRAIL and (ii) any cash to be contributed to GRAIL by the “PIPE Commitments”. In the event that GRAIL has not received any of the PIPE Commitments, Illumina shall promptly pay to GRAIL an amount in cash equal to the Defaulting PIPE Commitments."

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In Memory of Dr. Ismail Moarefi We look back with deep gratitude and honor Dr. Ismail Moarefi, who passed away on September 15, 2019. Ismail was one of our earliest and most steadfast supporters of NanoTemper. He believed in our vision when nearly no one else did. This video from 2009 captures his passion very well: Ismail's guidance was key in shaping what NanoTemper has become today. He was one of the brightest minds I've ever met. His impact on our work remains unforgettable. We miss you! #biotechnology #entrepreneurship #startup ————————— I am Philipp - founder, CEO & business angel. My bootstrapped company NanoTemper is a global leader for biophysical tools for biotech. Like my content? Click my name + follow + 🔔

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President-elect Donald Trump's healthcare policy remains undefined, but several potential avenues are explored in this article: 1. Reviving the MFN Drug Pricing Policy: Originally aimed to align U.S. drug prices with those in other developed nations. Faced legal challenges and was never fully implemented, so reinstatement may encounter similar issues. Implementing 2. Project 2025 Proposals: Heritage Foundation’s 922-page policy plan includes major conservative healthcare reforms, such as repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Analysts see a repeal as unlikely despite its inclusion. 3. Insurance and Medicare Advantage Reforms: Healthcare may rank lower on Trump’s agenda. Changes could focus on insurance markets and Medicare Advantage, emphasizing private-sector solutions and deregulation. Implementation Strategies: 1. Executive Actions: Potential use of executive orders to swiftly modify healthcare regulations, though such actions could face legal challenges. 2. Legislative Efforts: With Republican control in Congress, legislative changes are possible, but internal dynamics and a slim Senate majority may pose challenges. 3. Regulatory Revisions: Appointing agency leaders aligned with policy goals to drive regulatory changes within Health and Human Services, affecting healthcare and insurance markets. #HealthcarePolicy #TrumpAdministration #HealthReform #DrugPricing #Project2025 #MedicareAdvantage #HealthLegislation #ExecutiveOrders #MostFavoredNation #IRARepeal #HealthcareReform #MedicarePolicy #HealthPolicyAnalysis #PublicHealth #AffordableCareAct #biotech #biotechnology #healthcare #biopharma #advancedtherapies #FDA #mergersandacquisitions #pharma

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Interesting editorial on biotech in TIME Magazine by Google's ex-Chair/CEO Eric Schmidt. I remember about a decade ago arguing with Google founder Sergey Brin (yes he was wearing a track suit) about whether the right business model for NGS was selling sequencing-as-a-service (him) or instrument+reagents (me). Point being that there's been a long time interest in NGS (and Illumina) at Google (most recently AlphaFold from Google Deepmind) consistent with their mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Schmidt: "Like the digital revolution, the biotech revolution stands to transform America’s economy as we know it—and it’s coming faster than we expect, turbocharged by AI. Recent advances in biotech are unlocking our ability to program biology just as we program computers. Just like OpenAI’s ChatGPT trains on human language input to come up with new text, AI models trained on biological sequences could design novel proteins, predict cancer growth, and create other useful consumables. In the future, AI will be able to help us run through millions of theoretical and actual biological experiments, more accurately predicting outcomes without arduous trial-and-error—vastly accelerating the rate of new discoveries."

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In this recent Scientific American article, a well known historian of science provides a rather misleading description of Occam's razor or, more precisely, offers "counterexamples" that are not. The author's manifesto, that "the simplest explanation is often not the best one" is terribly ill-defined. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with that statement, it just needs a lot of context, and the context provided by the author is just plain wrong. An "explanation" of an observation or phenomenon is a model, a simplified version of reality built for the purpose of falsifiably describing the "cause(s)" of the observation of phenomenon. Occam's razor is then a principle stating that the simplest possible model consistent with the observation and what is known about the phenomenon, using the least number of assumptions, is the best explanation. In the article, the author proceeds to give examples that are absolutely consistent with Occam's razor while trying to convince us that they are counterexamples. 1. "While studying the motion of spiral galaxies, [astronomer Vera C.] Rubin discovered that the speed at which stars rotated around the center of their galaxies made sense only if these galaxies contained an additional mass weighing about 10 times more than the visible stars. The claim of a new form of “dark” matter—unseen and unseeable and present in far greater quantities than the visible matter of the universe—was not a simple explanation, but it turned out to be the best explanation." Sorry but the author herself tells us that the "only explanation" must involve dark matter, therefore no other explanation would explain the observation of the rotation of stars around the center of their galaxies. 2. "Newton explained light as being made of particles, whereas other scientists of his era explained it as a wave. Quantum me­chanics, however, tells us that light is, in some respects, both a wave and a particle. Newton’s account was simpler, but modern physics tells us that the more complex model is closer to the truth." Sorry, but Newtonian mechanics has not disappeared from higher education studies because it remains the simplest explanation of a lot of macroscopic phenomena. Quantum mechanics is required in a different domain to explain different observations. Etc. More examples from smoking and COVID. Same fallacy.Understanding the context of an "explanation" means understanding what the model must be consistent with. You can't invoke Occam's razor without defining the constraints the model must satisfy. Some relatives of Occam's razor, such as the maximum entropy principle, have been wildly successful and take constraints into account explicitly. There would be no statistical physics or information theory without it. https://lnkd.in/gDhFrwhZ

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Rigor is setting in ... science. let's hope it is not rigor mortis. It is very meta and ironic when a paper that is supposed to check the reproducibility of social science experiments (and does so with an 86% rate) gets retracted. It is no secret that science is experiencing a reproducibility crisis right now, but let's not make it worse by fighting with each other. #reproducibility #nature #socialsciences https://lnkd.in/gAwpacs9

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Becoming a small business owner/#entrepreneur was not part of my plan when I initially decided to study medicine. But over the past 3 years, it has become a deeply meaningful and fulfilling part of my life and career. It is crucial to me and the 33 million other small business owners that we have the right leadership at the helm of this country. Kamala Harris is focused on making sure small businesses have the support they need to grow and thrive, including her plans to expand the tax deduction for new small businesses, launch a small business expansion fund, and cut red tape. She is the better candidate for small business PERIOD! And if you need further convincing, listen to Reid Hoffman (one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time), who makes the business case against Donald Trump: "His economic agenda is a shortsighted mash of policies that scores of top economists and business leaders predict will add up to higher inflation, less stability and lower growth... For all of these reasons, the business case is clear. The smart money is on Harris." https://lnkd.in/eGa-biK8 https://lnkd.in/ev32icm7 #election #smallbusiness #economy

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Digitization and Emotions: A Second Look (an Original Story) Ramesh was furious with his father today after waiting four hours at the doorstep. His father, over 70 and hard of hearing, often missed calls or accidentally silenced the phone. Not tech-savvy, smartphones were a challenge for him. Ramesh had taken a half-day leave to complete an online MBA assignment. He worked as a front desk clerk at a multinational company and aspired to be promoted to a managerial position before settling down. Assuming his father was asleep, Ramesh grew frustrated. Neighbors suggested Sharmaji might be out. Ramesh recalled his father mentioning a trip to the bank to update his pension passbook. With no other option, Ramesh waited. Ramesh planned to teach his father online banking to save him from the physical toll of traveling and standing in queues. When his father returned at 4:00 PM, Ramesh expressed his frustration. After making tea, he shared his plan. Sharmaji listened and then explained. "Ramesh, I don't go to the bank just to waste time. It's good for my health and keeps me connected. Today, I met Ahluwalia sahib. We reminisced, had fruit chat, and were warmly greeted by bank employees. The bank is like family to me." He reminded Ramesh of the community's support when his mother had a heart attack. "If I learn online banking, I'd lose these relationships and the sense of community." This was an eye-opener for Ramesh, who realized the importance of physical connections. Digitization had made life seem artificial and isolating. Ramesh understood the value of face-to-face interactions. While online facilities are convenient, maintaining physical connections is crucial for genuine human emotions and support. The story is partly inspired by a similar story in Hindi, "Online Delivery of Emotions" (translated title) on Quora. #stories #family #relations #friends #friendship #quora #acquaintances  #life #agedlife #oldage #digitisation #online

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So the "Chevron deference" ruling by this Supreme Court has created a strange sort of panic attack within the life sciences ecosphere. I suspect this is a huge over reaction and that in reality very little will change. Agencies, including the FDA, will continue to make rules and regulations, and in the FDA's case based on science. And ALL of these are still enforceable. What is slightly altered is the path of litigation to challenge these rulings. SCOTUS has suggested that Congress needs to tighten up their legislation and provide more guidance to agencies. That is NOT going to happen. It is not how legislation is written, nor how it passes. The ambiguities in the law are often what allows for the compromise that allows for passage. Sometimes in the appropriations process an "earmark" may provide some specificity for an agency on how to spend certain money, but that is not what SCOTUS had in mind here. What they did rule, was that the Courts could no longer simply say "we defer" to the expertise of the particular agency as a matter of law (for instance the FDA). It did NOT say that the Courts couldn't, and in fact shouldn't, defer to the expertise in the agency. Judges are not going to all of a sudden become molecular biologists, or experts in genetic engineering. Nor are they going to clog up their (already over crowded) dockets with evidentiary hearings where volumes of counter balancing "data" are presented by (say the FDA) and a company challenging a ruling. That's simply not how it actually works. In general Judges are simply going to substitute the words "accept" the FDA's conclusion on the evidence, for "defer to as a matter of law". Yes there are going to be occasions where an agency, even the FDA, makes such a glaring error that even this low level of review will enable a successful challenge, but we should welcome that as further strengthening the system, not destroying it. The FDA is, in fact, acknowledged as the gold standard around the world. We should trust that processes and decisions can stand up to some minimal added level of scrutiny.

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5% of the US population is currently dealing with Long Covid, a condition that has "Knocked a Million Americans Off Their Career Paths" (The Wall Street Journal, Aug 26). In response to this pressing issue, #EECP is emerging as a potential solution. Since 2021, efforts have been ongoing to address Long Covid using Enhanced External Counterpulsation (#EECP), a non-invasive therapy likened to "passive exercise". The results have been promising, with significant milestones achieved: - 2021: Dayrit et al. reported the first successful case using EECP in the USA (N=1) - 2022: Sathyamoorthy et al. validated the concept with a study involving 16 individuals in the USA - 2023: Wu et al. further validated the concept with a study of 10 individuals in Sweden - 2024: Fox et al. demonstrated positive outcomes in the largest long Covid cohort to date, involving 231 individuals in the USA The scientific advancements in this field are indeed profound, and I am proud to have played a key role in driving this research alongside a dedicated team of collaborators. #longcovid #postcovid #brainfog #covid #medicalnews

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