The Rhyothemis princeps Brain Externalization Project

A recent flare up of fibrocystic breast symptoms had me wondering if use of cold packs has any effect on breast cancer (BC) risk. Cold packs are often recommended for mastalgia (breast pain) from fibrocystic breast disease, mastitis, engorgement due to breast feeding cessation, and post breast cancer surgery. Whole body cold exposure has been found to increase tumor growth and metastasis in mice: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/269266 T-cell function is diminished at colder temperature leading to reduced anti-tumor immune responses. The article notes implications for standard research practice of housing mice at relatively colder temperatures - another thing to add to the list of problems in current practices.  (Could cold acclimation be used to promote tolerance in autoimmunity and atopy? Another topic for another day.) The mice were subjected to whole body cold exposure  - not spot treatment. It is conceivable that reducing acute inflammation through localized cold exposure

Is it possible that machine learning-assisted anthropometric analysis could provide better risk assessment than genetic screening for cancer or other conditions (e.g., connective tissue disorders, heart failure, etc.)?  Relative proportions are reflective of relative growth rates of organs and tissues which in turn are the product of both genes and environment and are dependent on factors such as the balance of growth hormones and nutrient intakes. It seems that if a large number of individuals were scanned photographically - or much better with MRI (since more interesting measurements could be taken, e.g. width of the aorta) and the scans were provided as input, along with data from their health records, to an appropriately designed  machine learning algorithm, it may be possible to  predict risk of various diseases based on anthropometric parameters alone. This occurred to me just prior to learning that a new company, Ezra, is offering whole body MRI scans for early cancer d

Loss of frataxin is lethal in multicellular organisms. Why is frataxin necessary for multicellular life? Use of Game-Theoretical Methods in Biochemistry and Biophysics [2008] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2577752/ "Recently, it has been shown experimentally that stimulation of respiration by frataxin in colon cancer cells reduced growth rate [47]. Thus, cancer can be regarded as a regression to selfish behaviour of cells. Healthy higher organisms possess regulation mechanisms to suppress cancer. However, in early evolution of multicellularity, these mechanisms probably did not yet exist." So that's one reason. Could there be some relationship to osmoregulation? 2020-6-10 Osmoregulation implies maintenance of electrochemical gradients, just as multicellularity implies morphogenesis. Then I remembered Dr Michael Levin's talk on bioelectric fields and morphogenesis: Of course, since comments are turned off I can't make my notes in the YT comment