Climate change Is not settled science - at least not the popular models

Here is a link to a video where Henrik Svensmark presents research results for his Climate Model.

HS's theory incorporates the effect of solar activity and cosmic rays.  It looks plausible and, if true, would be the dominant effect on climate change.  Moreover, it does not imply the disastrous climate future that the so called "settled climate science" implies.

I think that there is a good chance that HS is closer to the truth than the "settled science" crowd.  In any case, those who believe climate change, as popularly portrayed, is settled science and throw about terms like "climate change deniers" in an attempt to discredit people like HS strike me as anti-science - I interpret their attitude and behavior as providing evidence for concluding that they are not credible.

Brain-computer interface enables people with paralysis to control tablet devices

From Science Daily.
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Tablets and other mobile computing devices are part of everyday life, but using them can be difficult for people with paralysis. New research from the BrainGate* consortium shows that a brain-computer interface (BCI) can enable people with paralysis to directly operate an off-the-shelf tablet device just by thinking about making cursor movements and clicks.

In a study published November 21 in PLOS ONE, three clinical trial participants with tetraplegia, each of whom was using the investigational BrainGate BCI that records neural activity directly from a small sensor placed in the motor cortex, were able to navigate through commonly used tablet programs, including email, chat, music-streaming and video-sharing apps. The participants messaged with family, friends, members of the research team and their fellow participants. They surfed the web, checked the weather and shopped online. One participant, a musician, played a snippet of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on a digital piano interface.

"For years, the BrainGate collaboration has been working to develop the neuroscience and neuroengineering know-how to enable people who have lost motor abilities to control external devices just by thinking about the movement of their own arm or hand," said Dr. Jaimie Henderson, a senior author of the paper and a Stanford University neurosurgeon. "In this study, we've harnessed that know-how to restore people's ability to control the exact same everyday technologies they were using before the onset of their illnesses. It was wonderful to see the participants express themselves or just find a song they want to hear."

The investigational BrainGate BCI includes a baby aspirin-sized implant that detects the signals associated with intended movements produced in the brain's motor cortex. Those signals are then decoded and routed to external devices. BrainGate researchers and other groups using similar technologies have shown that the device can enable people to move robotic arms or to regain control of their own limbs, despite having lost motor abilities from illness or injury. This study from the collaboration includes scientists, engineers and physicians from Brown University's Carney Institute for Brain Science, the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center (PVAMC), Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Stanford University.

Two of the participants in this latest study had weakness or loss of movement of their arms and legs due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive disease affecting the nerves in the brain and spine that control movement. The third participant was paralyzed due to a spinal cord injury. All were enrolled in a clinical trial aimed at assessing the safety and feasibility of the investigational BrainGate system.

For this study, neural signals from the BrainGate BCI were routed to a Bluetooth interface configured to work like a wireless mouse. The virtual mouse was then paired to an unmodified Google Nexus 9 tablet. The participants were then asked to perform a set of tasks designed to see how well they were able to navigate within a variety of commonly used apps, and move from app to app. The participants browsed through music selections on a streaming service, searched for videos on YouTube, scrolled through a news aggregator and composed emails and chats.

The study showed that participants were able to make up to 22 point-and-click selections per minute while using a variety of apps. In text apps, the participants were able to type up to 30 effective characters per minute using standard email and text interfaces.

The participants reported finding the interface intuitive and fun to use, the study noted. One said, "It felt more natural than the times I remember using a mouse." Another reported having "more control over this than what I normally use."

The researchers were pleased to see how quickly the participants used the tablet interface to explore their hobbies and interests.

"It was great to see our participants make their way through the tasks we asked them to perform, but the most gratifying and fun part of the study was when they just did what they wanted to do -- using the apps that they liked for shopping, watching videos or just chatting with friends," said lead author Dr. Paul Nuyujukian, a bioengineer at Stanford. "One of the participants told us at the beginning of the trial that one of the things she really wanted to do was play music again. So to see her play on a digital keyboard was fantastic."

The fact that the tablet devices were entirely unaltered and had all preloaded accessibility software turned off was an important part of the study, the researchers said.

"The assistive technologies that are available today, while they're important and useful, are all inherently limited in terms of either the speed of use they enable, or the flexibility of the interface," said Krishna Shenoy, a senior author of the paper and an electrical engineer and neuroscientist at Stanford University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "That's largely because of the limited input signals that are available. With the richness of the input from the BCI, we were able to just buy two tablets on Amazon, turn on Bluetooth and the participants could use them with our investigational BrainGate system right out of the box."

The researchers say that the study also has the potential to open important new lines of communication between patients with severe neurological deficits and their health care providers.

"This has great potential for restoring reliable, rapid and rich communication for somebody with locked-in syndrome who is unable to speak," said Jose Albites Sanabria, who performed this research as a graduate student in biomedical engineering at Brown University. "That not only could provide increased interaction with their family and friends, but can provide a conduit for more thoroughly describing ongoing health issues with caregivers."

As a neuroscientist and practicing critical care neurologist, senior author Dr. Leigh Hochberg of Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Providence VA Medical Center sees tremendous potential for the restorative capabilities of BCIs exemplified in this study.

"When I see somebody in the neuro-intensive care unit who has had an acute stroke and has lost the ability to move or communicate, I'd like to be able to say, 'I'm very sorry this has happened, but we can restore your ability to use the technologies you were using before this happened, and you'll be able to use them again tomorrow,'" Hochberg said. "And we are getting closer to being able to tell someone who has been diagnosed with ALS, 'even while we continue to seek out a cure, you will never lose the ability to communicate.' This work is a step toward those goals."

Gun free zones invite mass shootings

John Lott's column in the Chicago Tribune.

JL is on target.

See JL's book "More Guns Less Crime" for the best discussion and summary of the research done on these topics.  The best statistical studies (many done by JL and his colleagues) implies that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed guns is associated with a material reduction in the violent crime rate, including murders.  It also shows that the vast majority of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones.

The anti-gun crowd advocates disallowing concealed carry and increasing the number of gun-free zones.  These actions are likely to increase mass shootings and increase the violent crime rate.

The anti-gun crowd also lies about JL and his research in an attempt to discredit him.
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This doesn’t happen anywhere else on the planet,” said California’s Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom. “We stand alone in the world in the number of mass shootings," echoed U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. These were typical comments after an alleged shooter murdered 12 people in Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

People have been acting for a long time like the United States is the world’s hotbed of mass public shootings. Following a 2015 mass shooting during his administration, President Barack Obama declared: “The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.”

This belief is constantly used to push for more gun control. If we can only get rid of guns in the United States, we will get rid of these mass public shootings and be more like the rest of the world, gun-control supporters preach.

But America doesn’t lead the world in mass public shootings. We’re not even close. Just last month, a school shooting in Crimea, Russia, claimed 20 lives and wounded 65 others. But Americans usually don’t hear about such events.

The Crime Prevention Research Center, of which I am president, recently finished updating a list of mass public shootings worldwide. These shootings must claim four or more lives in a public place. Following the FBI definition, the shootings we list are carried out simply with the intention of killing. We exclude gang fights because they tend to be motivated by battles for drug turf. Murders that arise from other crimes are also excluded.

Then there are politically motivated attacks, either by or against governments. Some shootings occur in the course of guerrilla wars for sovereignty. These attacks do not meet our definition. This meant excluding a lot of very deadly shootings such as those in the Russian-Chechen conflict. The Russian Beslan School siege of Sept. 1, 2004, left 385 dead and another 783 wounded. In a three-day siege of the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in 2002, 130 were killed and more than 450 were wounded.

Over the course of 18 years, from 1998 to 2015, our list contains 2,354 attacks and at least 4,880 shooters outside the United States and 53 attacks and 57 shooters within this country. By our count, the U.S. makes up 1.49 percent of the murders worldwide, 2.20 percent of the attacks, and less than 1.15 percent of the mass public shooters. All these are much less than America’s 4.6 percent share of the world population.

Of the 97 countries where we identified mass public shootings, the U.S. ranks 64th per capita in its rate of attacks and 65th in fatalities. Major European countries, such as Norway, Finland, France, Switzerland and Russia, all have at least 25 percent higher per capita murder rates from mass public shootings.

While Americans are rightly concerned by the increased frequency and severity of mass public shootings, the rest of the world is experiencing much larger increases in per capita rates of attack. The frequency of foreign mass public shootings since 1998 has grown 291 percent faster than in the U.S.

The media bias on this is overwhelming. Even after President Donald Trump again raised the danger of gun-free zones, the news media still refuse to mention this fact in its reporting of mass shootings. The attack earlier this month at Borderline Bar & Grill occurred in a gun-free zone. Unlike in 39 states, concealed handgun permit holders in California are banned from carrying permitted concealed handguns into bars. The mass shooting Monday at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital & Medical Center in Bronzeville was at a place where law-abiding citizens were banned from having guns.

Most gunmen are smart enough to know that they can kill more people if they attack places where victims can’t defend themselves. That’s one reason why 98 percent of mass public shootings since 1950 have occurred in places where citizens are banned from having guns.

The national media tend to ignore case after case of mass public shootings being stopped by armed private citizens. Just a couple of days before the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh a concealed handgun permit holder stopped an alleged killer who was shooting blacks at a Kroger grocery store in Louisville, Ky.

National media outlets such as ABC and NBC covered the attack, noting that the alleged gunman told another white man that: “Whites don’t kill whites.” It sounded as if the gunman was merely reassuring a bystander that he had nothing to worry about. But reporters left out the crucial first part of the quote. The killer said: “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.” The other white person was pointing a permitted concealed handgun at the killer.

It is understandable that the media dosn´t cover most mass public shootings in other countries. But as much as it might not fit the media’s narrative, the U.S. is a relatively safe place from these shooting attacks. Still, we need to let people protect themselves and each other. We need to get rid of gun-free zones.

Fruits of college indoctrination

Walter Williams at townhall.com has it right.

Freedom of speech was a good idea - to bad it's gone.
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Much of today's incivility and contempt for personal liberty has its roots on college campuses, and most of the uncivil and contemptuous are people with college backgrounds. Let's look at a few highly publicized recent examples of incivility and attacks on free speech.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, were accosted and harassed by a deranged left-wing mob as they were leaving a dinner at Georgetown University. Sen. McConnell was harassed by protesters at Reagan National Airport, as well as at several venues in Kentucky. Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife were harassed at a Washington, D.C., restaurant. Afterward, a group called Smash Racism DC wrote: "No -- you can't eat in peace -- your politics are an attack on all of us. You're (sic) votes are a death wish. Your votes are hate crimes." Other members of Congress -- such as Andy Harris, Susan Collins and Rand Paul -- have been physically attacked or harassed by leftists. Most recent is the case of Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson. A leftist group showed up at his house at night, damaging his front door and chanting, "Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!" "Racist scumbag, leave town!"

Mayhem against people with different points of view is excused as just deserts for what is seen as hate speech. Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray discovered this when he was shouted down at Middlebury College and the professor escorting him was sent to the hospital with injuries. Students at the University of California, Berkeley shut down a controversial speaker and caused riot damage estimated at $100,000. Protesters at both UCLA and Claremont McKenna College disrupted scheduled lectures by Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has discovered so-called bias response teams on hundreds of American college campuses. Bias response teams report to campus officials -- and sometimes to law enforcement officers -- speech that may cause "alarm, anger, or fear" or that might otherwise offend. Drawing pictures or cartoons that belittle people because of their beliefs or political affiliation can be reported as hate speech. Universities expressly set their sights on prohibiting constitutionally protected speech. As FIRE reported in 2017, hundreds of universities nationwide now maintain Orwellian systems that ask students to report -- often anonymously -- their neighbors, friends and professors for any instances of supposed biased speech and expression.

A recent Brookings Institution poll found that nearly half of college students believe that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. That's nonsense; it is. Fifty-one percent of college students think they have a right to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. Nineteen percent of students think that it's acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking. Over 50 percent agree that colleges should prohibit speech and viewpoints that might offend certain people. One shouldn't be surprised at all if these visions are taught and held by many of their professors. Colleges once taught and promoted an understanding of Western culture. Today many professors and the college bureaucracy teach students that they're victims of Western culture and values.

Benjamin Franklin wrote, "Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech." Much later, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, "Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime." From the Nazis to Stalinists to Maoists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, just as American leftists did during the 1960s. Their support for free speech is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control and confiscation. The right to say what they please is their tool for indoctrination, propagandizing and proselytization. Once the leftists gain control, as they have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed. This is increasingly the case on university campuses. Much of the off-campus incivility we see today is the fruit of what a college education has done to our youth.

Moral Bankruptcy

From Thomas Sowell in the Jewish World Review.

TS is on target.
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People who follow politics, even casually, learn not to expect high moral standards from politicians. But there are some outrages that show a new low, even for politicians.

Among the consequences of Democrats' recent election victories, especially at the state and local levels, is the election of officials who have publicly announced their opposition to charter schools, and their determination to restrict or roll back the growth of those schools.

What have the charter schools done to provoke such opposition?

Often located in low-income, minority neighborhoods, these schools have in many cases produced educational outcomes far better than the traditional public schools in such neighborhoods.

A Success Academy charter elementary school in Harlem had a higher proportion of the children in one of its classes pass the statewide math exam than in any other class at the same grade level, anywhere in the state of New York.

As a result of the charter schools' educational achievements, it is not uncommon for thousands of children to be on waiting lists to get into such schools — in New York City, tens of thousands.

This represents a huge opportunity for many low-income, minority youngsters who have very few other opportunities for a better life. But, to politicians dependent on teachers' unions for money and votes, charter schools are expendable.

In various communities around the country, charter schools are already being prevented from moving into empty school buildings, which would allow them to admit more children from waiting lists.

Denying these children what can be their one chance in life is a new low, even for politicians.

Political rhetoric can camouflage what is happening. But the arguments against charter schools are so phony that anyone with a decent education should be able to see right through them. Unfortunately, the very failure of many traditional public schools to provide a decent education enables their defenders to get away with arguments that could not survive any serious analysis.

Consider the incessantly repeated argument that charter schools are "taking money away from the public schools." Charter schools are themselves public schools, educating children who have a legal right to be educated with taxpayer money set aside for that purpose. When some fraction of children move from traditional public schools to charter schools, why should the same fraction of money not move with them?

What is the money for, if not to educate children? The amount of taxpayer money spent per child in charter schools is seldom, if ever, greater than the amount spent per child in traditional public schools. Often it is less.

Another argument used in attacking charter schools is that, despite particular charter schools with outstanding results, by and large charter school students' results on educational tests are no better than the results in traditional public schools. Even if we accept this claim, it leaves out one crucial fact.

White students and Asian students together constitute a majority of the students in traditional public schools. Black students and Hispanic students together constitute a majority of the students in charter schools.

On virtually all educational tests, black and Hispanic students score significantly lower than white and Asian students. If charter schools as a whole just produce educational results comparable to those in traditional public schools as a whole, that is a big improvement.

If you want to make a comparison of educational results with comparable students, you can look at results among children living in the same neighborhood, at the same grade levels — and with both charter school children and children in a traditional school being educated in the very same building.

Such comparisons in New York City showed, almost every time, a majority of the students in the traditional public school scoring in the bottom half in both math and English, while the percentage of charter school students scoring in the top half was some multiple of the percentage of other students scoring that high.

This is what the teachers' unions and the politicians want to put a stop to. Who will speak up for those children?

Economic myths

Here are some economic myths, courtesy of Armen Alchian and William Allen. Both taught economics at UCLA. The list is an excerpt from their book “Universal Economics”.

Try these on the “intellectuals” you run across to find out if they know what they are talking about.

•  Price controls prevent higher costs to consumers. 
•  Reducing unemployment necessarily requires creation of more jobs. 
• Larger incomes for some people require smaller incomes for others. 
• Free, or low, tuition reduces costs to students. 
• All unemployment must be wasteful. 
• Stockbrokers and investment advisors predict better than the alternatives of throwing a dart at a list of stocks or the use of horoscopes. 
• Taxes are borne entirely by consumers of taxed items. 
• Employers pay for “employer-provided insurance”. 
• Minimum wage legislation helps the unskilled and minorities. 
• Housing developers drive up the price of land. 
• Foreign imports reduce the total of domestic jobs. 
• “Equal pay for equal work” laws aid women, minorities, and the young. 
• Economic efficiency is a matter only of technology and engineering. 
• Agricultural and other surpluses stem from productivity outrunning demand. 
• Capitalism requires a social “harmony of interests” – but also capitalism is the source of competitiveness and conflict. 
• Property rights commonly conflict with human rights. 
• Business people are self-centered and rapacious, while government people are self-sacrificing and altruistic. 
• Labor unions protect the natural brotherhood and collective well-being of workers against their natural enemies, employers. 
• Charging a higher price always increases the seller’s profits. 
• The American economy is increasingly dominated by monopolists who arbitrarily set prices as high and wages as low as they please. 
• Rent control improves and expands housing. 
• There is unemployment because workers outnumber jobs. 
• Fluctuating prices create wasteful uncertainty and rising prices constitute inflation, so government should make it illegal to raise prices. 
• We cannot compete in a world in which most foreign wages are lower than wages paid to domestic workers.

The Number of Mass Public Shootings by year since 1998, comparison to international number of such shootings over time

Here is a link to an article by John Lott that addresses mass public shootings in the US and elsewhere.

Lott shows that the US mass murder rate is not particularly high relative to the rest of the world.  He also shows how flawed can be even the FBI's statistics.

Here is an excerpt.
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The FBI’s claims about Active Shootings increasing over time are completely flawed. Below is part of the discussion of this from Dr. Lott’s The War on Guns.

People ask me how I relax

Here is the link to a video about how to relax.

A promising new therapy to stop Parkinson's disease

From Science Daily.
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A promising new therapy to stop Parkinson's disease in its tracks has been developed at The University of Queensland.

UQ Faculty of Medicine researcher Associate Professor Trent Woodruff said the team found that a small molecule, MCC950, stopped the development of Parkinson's in several animal models.

"We have used this discovery to develop improved drug candidates and hope to carry out human clinical trials in 2020," Dr Woodruff said.

"Parkinson's disease is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease worldwide, with 10 million sufferers, whose control of body movements is affected.

"The disease is characterised by the loss of brain cells that produce dopamine, which is a chemical that co-ordinates motor control, and is accompanied by chronic inflammation in the brain.

"We found a key immune system target, called the NLRP3 inflammasome, lights up in Parkinson's patients, with signals found in the brain and even in the blood.

"MCC950, given orally once a day, blocked NLRP3 activation in the brain and prevented the loss of brain cells, resulting in markedly improved motor function."

There are no medications on the market that prevent brain cell loss in Parkinson's patients, with current therapies focusing on managing symptoms rather than halting the disease.

UQ Institute for Molecular Bioscience researcher Professor Matt Cooper said drug companies had traditionally tried to treat neurodegenerative disorders by blocking neurotoxic proteins that build up in the brain and cause disease.

"We have taken an alternative approach by focusing on immune cells in the brain called microglia that can clear these toxic proteins," he said.

"With diseases of ageing such as Parkinson's, our immune system can become over-activated, with microglia causing inflammation and damage to the brain.

"MCC950 effectively 'cooled the brains on fire', turning down microglial inflammatory activity, and allowing neurons to function normally."

The study is published in Science Translational Medicine, and was made possible by generous support from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and Shake it Up Australia Foundation, which fund innovative research into therapies for Parkinson's disease.

"We are extremely grateful to our funders who have supported multiple research projects on this target at UQ, and to their donors who support medical research for those living with Parkinson's," Dr Woodruff said.

The study was undertaken at the School of Biomedical Sciences and involved UQCCR Group Leader in Clinical Neuroscience Dr Richard Gordon, an Advance Queensland Research Fellow, and PhD student Eduardo Albornoz.

"The findings provide exciting new insight into how the spread of toxic proteins occurs in Parkinson's disease and highlights the important role of the immune system in this process," Dr Gordon said.

"With continued funding support, we are exploring new treatment strategies including repurposing drugs to target mechanisms by which the immune system and the inflammasome contribute to disease progression."

Breakthrough in treating paralysis

From Science Daily.
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Three paraplegics who sustained cervical spinal cord injuries many years ago are now able to walk with the aid of crutches or a walker thanks to new rehabilitation protocols that combine targeted electrical stimulation of the lumbar spinal cord and weight-assisted therapy.

This latest study, called STIMO (STImulation Movement Overground), establishes a new therapeutic framework to improve recovery from spinal cord injury. All patients involved in the study recovered voluntary control of leg muscles that had been paralyzed for many years. Unlike the findings of two independent studies published recently in the United States on a similar concept, neurological function was shown to persist beyond training sessions even when the electrical stimulation was turned off. The STIMO study, led by the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) in Switzerland, is published in the 1 November 2018 issues of Natureand Nature Neuroscience.

"Our findings are based on a deep understanding of the underlying mechanisms which we gained through years of research on animal models. We were thus able to mimic in real time how the brain naturally activates the spinal cord," says EPFL neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine.

"All the patients could walk using body weight support within one week. I knew immediately that we were on the right path," adds CHUV neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch, who surgically placed the implants in the patients.

"The exact timing and location of the electrical stimulation are crucial to a patient's ability to produce an intended movement. It is also this spatiotemporal coincidence that triggers the growth of new nerve connections," says Courtine.

This study achieves an unprecedented level of precision in electrically stimulating spinal cords. "The targeted stimulation must be as precise as a Swiss watch. In our method, we implant an array of electrodes over the spinal cord which allows us to target individual muscle groups in the legs," explains Bloch. "Selected configurations of electrodes are activating specific regions of the spinal cord, mimicking the signals that the brain would deliver to produce walking."

The challenge for the patients was to learn how to coordinate their brains' intention to walk with the targeted electrical stimulation. But that did not take long. "All three study participants were able to walk with body-weight support after only one week of calibration, and voluntary muscle control improved tremendously within five months of training," says Courtine. "The human nervous system responded even more profoundly to the treatment than we expected."

The new rehabilitation protocols based on this targeted neurotechnology lead to improved neurological function by allowing the participants to actively train natural overground walking capabilities in the lab for extensive periods of time, as opposed to passive training like exoskeleton-assisted stepping.

During rehabilitation sessions, the three participants were able to walk hands-free over more than one kilometer with the help of targeted electrical stimulation and an intelligent bodyweight-support system. Moreover, they exhibited no leg-muscle fatigue, and so there was no deterioration in stepping quality. These longer, high-intensity training sessions proved crucial for triggering activity-dependent plasticity -- the nervous system's intrinsic ability to reorganize nerve fibers -- which leads to improved motor function even when the electrical stimulation is turned off.

Previous studies using more empirical approaches, such as continuous electrical stimulation protocols, have shown that a select few paraplegics can indeed take steps with the help of walking aids and electrical stimulation, but only over short distances and as long as the stimulation is on. As soon as the stimulation is turned off, the patients immediately return to their previous state of paralysis and are no longer able to activate leg movements.

The startup GTX medical, co-founded by Courtine and Bloch, will use these findings to develop tailored neurotechnology with the aim to turn this rehabilitation paradigm into a treatment available at hospitals and clinics everywhere. "We are building next-generation neurotechnology that will also be tested very early post-injury, when the potential for recovery is high and the neuromuscular system has not yet undergone the atrophy that follows chronic paralysis. Our goal is to develop a widely accessible treatment," adds Courtine.