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Good News in Science

Roboramma

Penultimate Amazing
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This is meant as a catch all thread for good news items that may not warrant their own thread, if only because they're unlikely to lead to a huge amount of discussion. If we all agree that some new thing is great, a thread dedicated to it will probably die quickly, but I still expect that there is significant interest in these sorts of things. So please post some good news in science here!

Today's example:

Good News Against Dengue
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/good-news-against-dengue
So what the world needs, clearly, is a dengue vaccine that's effective against all the different serotypes and can be given to people who haven't been infected yet. Late last year, Takeda announced clincial results for their vaccine candidate (Qdenga). That one needs two doses, three months apart, but it can be given to children who have never had dengue at all. The efficacy at one year after this protocal was 80%, and follow-up at 4 1/2 years showed 60% efficacy against infection (efficacy against severe infection/hospitalization was 90% and 80% at those two time points). And now comes word from Brazil of another vaccine (Butantan-DV), which shows a two-year efficacy of 80% after a single dose (a real advantage!) The Phase III of that one is still underway, but it certainly looks promising. Neither of these show any signs of the ADE problem.
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Here's a nice story about how world air pollution (not greenhouse gases) seems to have peaked.

The good news, then, is that the world is probably passed “peak pollution”. I say “probably” because confidently declaring a peak is, apparently, the best way to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Here, I’m talking specifically about emissions of harmful local air pollutants: gases like nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur dioxide which causes acid rain, carbon monoxide, black carbon, organic carbon, non-methane volatile organic compounds. I’m not talking about greenhouse gases.

The Community Emissions Data System (CEDS) recently extended its long-term dataset on emissions of air pollutants up to the end of 2022.

I updated this data in our explorer tool on Our World in Data (where you can explore the trends by country).

What’s striking is that emissions appear to have peaked for all of these pollutants, with the exception of ammonia, which is almost entirely produced by agriculture. Organic carbon and NMVOCs are not quite out of the clear yet, but might not reach their previous peaks again.
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I’ve seen a few articles this week saying renewables now account for 30% of the world’s energy production. I’m taking that as good news.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Arguably, this is Bad News, at least at this time: air pollution did a lot to cool down the planet.
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Since it kills millions of people every year, I still think it's good news that it's started to decline. Also we were going to have to transition to a lower air pollution world and take that hit with respect to the cooling effects at some point, it may be better to take that hit earlier and hopefully help to motivate the energy transition earlier.
 
Richard Scolyer: Top doctor remains brain cancer-free after a year

A year after a massive seizure triggered his brain cancer diagnosis, top melanoma doctor Richard Scolyer remains cancer-free.

The Australian has undergone a world-first, experimental treatment for glioblastoma, based on his own pioneering melanoma research.

His subtype of cancer is so aggressive most patients survive less than a year.

But the 57-year-old announced on Tuesday his latest MRI scan had again showed no recurrence of the tumour.
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The results so far have generated huge excitement that the duo may be on the cusp of a discovery which could one day help the roughly 300,000 people diagnosed with brain cancer globally each year.
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Cancer researchers at Yale developed a vaccine that slows or stops a form of bone cancer in dogs. While this particular form doesn't translate to human cancers well, any stride in cancer treatment in mammals is welcome.

The really cool part about it is that Yale drew in part on computational biotech work that my daughter did (not for Yale), crunching data to identify a specific genome that contributed to the successful pathway.
 
That's what killed my son last year. Too late for hm :( but very good news for what had been an automatic and early death sentence.

New treatments in cystic fibrosis are life changing

National Institutes of Health (NIH) (.gov)
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov › health › treatment
21 Nov 2023 — A triple combination medicine (elexacaftor-tezacaftor-ivacaftor) is the first approved treatment and may help up to 90% of people who have cystic fibrosis.
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Life changing cystic fibrosis treatment now available to ...

Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care
https://www.health.gov.au › ministers › media › life-ch...
6 Apr 2023 — From 1 May 2023, children aged 6 to 11 with cystic fibrosis will have access to the medicine Trikafta® (elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor and .
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