By Walt Hickey

I was the guest on this week’s 99% Invisible episode talking about the book, check it out!

Monkeys

The reality of modern medical science is that it requires lots and lots of monkeys to happen, as the primates make important test subjects for all kinds of medical and biological experiments. China was a longtime supplier of monkeys to the United States, supplying half of the 70,000 research monkeys used annually in the United States. That changed with the pandemic, when China stopped exporting them to the U.S. and never resumed, instead breeding monkeys for its own domestic research needs and also competing with the U.S. for monkeys from other countries. The price of monkeys has skyrocketed for American researchers, who now pay about $20,000 per test animal, up from $7,000 per animal a few years ago, and it’s a nationwide scientific problem the NIH is keen to solve. Safer Human Medicine, a company that supplies monkeys, aims to build a $396 million breeding facility in Georgia that can house up to 30,000 monkeys to plug that gap, starting with the cynomolgus macaques needed for pharmaceutical research and then potentially expanding to the rhesus macaques often used in academic research.

Sara Reardon, Science

Pilots

The 2024 pilot season — when producers make first episodes of proposed television series on spec, which are later shopped to networks who eventually decide to pass or green-light them — is a shadow of former pilot seasons, with only three broadcast pilots filming right now, all at NBC. Ten years ago, that number approached 100 broadcast pilots for all sorts of buyers. Part of this is networks moving away from pilots as a way to produce series — Fox’s development model is different, and the CW is using a lot of international co-productions — but it’s also a sign that many of the networks have simply given up on scripted series, and instead are looking to game shows and sports to fill their schedules. With the lack of sitcoms available, it’s never been harder to find gainful employment as a kooky neighbor who inexplicably spends forty percent of their day in a different person’s house, or as a landlord increasingly involved in their tenant’s day-to-day life. The upcoming Bureau of Labor Statistics data is expected to indicate that it’s one of the worst times for irascible yet kindhearted grumps with a sharp tongue but a heart of gold attempting to enter the entertainment workforce.

Nellie Andreeva, Deadline

Diving

Experimental scuba diving is the cutting edge of a sometimes dangerous hobby, where experienced divers attempt to find new ways to go deeper than ever before. The depth record stands at 308 meters on a dive, and many want to push that further by changing the composition of the gas breathed at extreme depths. The mixture of gas we consider air — 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 1 percent other — causes gas narcosis at around 40 meters down, and oxygen becomes toxic even lower. By diluting the oxygen and nitrogen with helium, divers have been able to get additional depth, and by adjusting that gas ratio as one dives deeper, experienced divers can remain physiologically sound. For non-military divers, this allowed the 200-meter barrier to be broken in 1987, and then pushed it out below 300 meters of depth in the ensuing decades, but still that entailed pushing through high-pressure nervous syndrome in the deeps. A proposal to start mixing in hydrogen to the gas mixture began to pick up steam in the deep diving scene, and in February 2023, diver Harry Harris used a hydrogen mixture to get down to 230 meters, a promising proof of concept.

Samantha Schuyler, MIT Technology Review

Leads

The annual report analyzing the leads and co-leads of the top 100 grossing films of every year from 2007 to 2023 found that last year, of the top 100, only 30 films featured a lead or co-lead who was a woman. That 30 percent of films is a significant step back from 2022, when 44 percent of films featured a female lead or co-lead, though it does show long-term progress given that it’s significantly improved from 2007, when just 20 percent of films had a woman in a leading role. That 30 percent of films is also, incidentally, the lowest annual percentage since 2014.

Katherine L. Neff, Stacy L. Smith and Katherine Pieper, Annenberg Inclusion Initiative

Child Care

Child care is a service with massive and widespread demand, low start-up costs, and lots and lots of government money recently devoted to it. Naturally, that combination means one thing: Private equity interests are eyeing the sector lustily, and many outfits are already rolling up child care facilities into larger companies. The top five for-profit child care chains are all owned or controlled by private equity, and as it stands private equity-backed ventures account for 10 to 12 percent of the market.

Adam Harris, The Atlantic

Venom

A new antibody has been discovered that’s been found to neutralize the key element of particularly deadly snake venom, long-chain three-finger alpha-neurotoxins. Snake venom isn’t one chemical, but rather a mix of dozens of compounds that target nerve cells, and snakebites claim 81,000 to 138,000 lives per year. The antibody was found after testing 100 billion artificial human antibodies in an antibody laboratory’s library to find which were most effective at binding to the toxins, and an antibody named 95Mat5 was particularly effective at binding to alpha-bungarotoxin, which is the main long-chain three-finger alpha-neurotoxin in krait venom. Not only did the five mice injected with the venom and anti-venom survive, but 95Mat5 furthermore saved mice injected with different snakes’ venom, and worked when given 20 minutes after the venom.

Christie Wilcox, Science

KAAN

The state-owned Turkish Aerospace Industries is aiming to produce its own fifth-generation stealth fighter by 2030 after its ejection from the American F-35 program five years ago, when it bought Russian missile defense systems. On Wednesday, a prototype of the KAAN fighter jet took its maiden flight, the first step towards that goal. The prototype used an American-made engine, but Turkish Aerospace Industries wants to get engines built locally by the time it delivers 20 jets to the Turkish Air Force by 2028. For Turkey, the hope is that’s just the beginning: It’s been approaching Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Azerbaijan and Qatar about buying them, and already counts Malaysia, Indonesia and Kazakhstan as customers for its drones.

Sinan Tavsan, Nikkei Asia

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