Vaccine Breakthroughs, Mobile Weather Stations and New Metric Prefixes

November 24

This week we will investigate a couple of vaccine breakthroughs. We may soon have a universal Flu vaccine that will last for a few years and Fentanyl addiction may soon be a thing of the past. We also look at how Waymo (part of Google’s parent company Alphabet) is making their driverless cars into mobile hyperlocal weather stations. Finally we discover the new prefixes for metric weights and measures with 27 and 30 zeros.

Vaccine Breakthroughs

Flu Vaccines

The Influenza family tree has been slowly unravelled since 1933. The family tree has provided clues to the vaccines that need to be developed in order to inoculate us prior to flu season. However Influenza is a master shapeshifter. Influenzas evolve every year and evade many vaccines.

Thanks to the m-RNA vaccines developed during Covid we may now have a solution. There are 4 vital proteins that tend to remain the same over different strains of the flu. A sugar coated protein called hemagglutinin dots the surface of the influenza virus. There are two major parts. The head domain which is variable and immunodominant (the immune response is directed here). Most vaccines target the head domain. The problem is that the head domain can change fairly easily. The second major part is a stork domain.

The proteins that tend to remain the same in all strains are neuraminidase, nucleoprotein and matrix protein 2. These proteins help the virus make copies of itself. There are 4 major flu types and types A and B primarily infect humans.

The new vaccine involves taking a piece of genetic code that isn’t capable of altering a person’s DNA and instructing it to make a particular type of protein that the immune system can learn to recognize and target. The researchers created an m-RNA cocktail encoding the 4 influenza proteins and the stalk portion of hemagglutinin.

The trial vaccine was then given to mice that had never experienced the flu. The mice were split into two groups, one group received a vaccine with all 4 proteins, the other a single protein. Some only had one shot, others a booster 4 weeks later. They were then subjected to a challenge trial where the mice are deliberately infected with an assortment of different flu strains.

The vaccine with all 4 proteins protected mice from the challenge trial. The single protein variant however did protect the mice from death from the flu. Additionally T cells (which roam the body and kill infected cells) were engaged in the fight against the flu strains. This double attack on the foreign viruses gives the broadest immune response.

The team believes that we will not need annual flu vaccine updates as the immune response should last for a few years. The next step will be for monkey and then human clinical trials to assess the vitality of this type of vaccine. Our previous exposure to the flu may impact the quality of the potential vaccines antibody response. This will take several years to further develop however a more effective and longer lasting flu vaccine may be on the way.

Fentanyl Vaccine

The synthetic opioid, fentanyl (widely prescribed for pain relief, particularly in the US) is highly addictive and currently killing 150 people a day in the US from overdose. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Currently 80% of people who become dependent on the drug suffer a relapse after quitting.

A new vaccine that can block the ability of fentanyl to enter the brain and thus eliminate the drugs’s high, has been developed at the University of Houston. The vaccine is able to generate anti-fentanyl antibodies which bind to the consumed fentanyl and prevent it from entering the brain. The drug is then eliminated from the body via the kidneys. By eliminating the euphoric high it is much easier for addicts to achieve sobriety.

Fentanyl is currently being added to street drugs such as cocaine making them more addictive. This contributes to the rising overdose rates. The next step is for the vaccine to enter clinical human trials.

Robotaxis are the new Mobile Weather Stations

Autonomous vehicles currently have difficulty in operating in bad weather. Heavy rain, snow and fog can scramble autonomous vehicles perception. systems. Alphabet (Google’s parent company) have addressed this problem by turning each of their autonomous vehicles into mobile weather stations.

Waymo (Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle division) has been developing weather stations for its’ vehicles for the past decade. The level of on the ground accuracy is becoming more important as Waymo rolls out its’ driverless taxi service (currently safety drivers are used however the safety drivers will be removed in the next few weeks leaving a completely driverless vehicle to navigate the streets of San Francisco).

Most of the early testing of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles was in sunny, dry and flat Arizona. In recent years Waymo has increased testing in snowy Novi, Michigan, rainy Kirkland, Washington, foggy San Fransico and humid Florida. Waymo soon needed more immediate weather information than provided by stationary weather stations (usually at airports or similar).

Waymo uses the maps generated by their autonomous vehicles to track the progression of coastal fogs as they flow in from the Pacific Ocean. It detects drizzle and light rain and snow that lead to wet roads (this rain and snow is usually invisible to Doplar radar). The continual on the ground information provided by the mobile weather stations allows the autonomous vehicles to prepare for the conditions that they are about to encounter. The information is hyperlocal and thus more useful for navigation.

Waymo’s ultimate goal is to build a vehicle that can reliably and safely drive in all weather conditions and outperform human drivers. The ability to understand and prepare for hyperlocal weather has been critically important in the progress to date.

New Metric Prefixes

The International System of Units (SI) is the agreed global standard for the metric system. The General Conference on Weights and Measures decide the names of the prefixes that we add to terms such as gram or meter, e.g. Kilo and Milli. The conference is held every 4 years at Versailles Palace in France.

For the first time in 3 decades two new prefixes have been added. Prior to this week the largest named length was a yottameter. A yottameter is a 1 followed by 24 zeros. The Yotta was originally added as chemists wanted to express vast molecular quantities. For the past 3 decades A Yotta prefix has been sufficient to describe quantities and measures that we encounter.

Now it is the sheer amount of data that we are producing that has required the addition of a Rotta and Quetta prefix. A rottabyte is 1 followed by 27 zeros and a Quettabyte is a 1 followed by 30 zeros.

So why Rotta and Quetta? The only two letters not used for other units or symbols were R and Q. Convention dictates that the larger prefixes end in an A and the smaller ones in a O. The middle of the two prefixes are very loosely based upon the Greek and Latin for 9 and 10.

If you want a reference as to how large the Rotta and Quetta prefixes describe, the Earth is roughly 6 rottagrams and Jupiter is roughly 2 quettagrams. 6 rottagrams is so much easier to say than 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grams. We will need to add a couple more terms in another 20 to 25 years.

Paying it Forward

If you have a start-up or know of a start-up that has a product ready for market please let me know. I would be happy to have a look and feature the startup in this newsletter. Also if any startups need introductions please get in touch and I will help where I can.

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Till next week.