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Roadway to the Brain? Alzheimer’s Linked to Notorious Tire Chemical (studyfinds.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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  • A tire chemical called 6PPD-Q, already blamed for killing salmon, was examined for possible links to Alzheimer’s disease in a new computer-based study.
  • Using computer models, researchers found that the chemical can latch onto several proteins associated with Alzheimer’s and reach brain regions involved in the disease.
  • No patients or animals were tested; the study rests entirely on computer predictions and reused datasets, so it cannot prove the chemical causes Alzheimer’s.

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[–] 18 points 4 months ago

lol does this explain all the car brained people

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    [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    Welp, time to reinvent the wheel. cracks knuckles

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    [–] 5 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Interesting but I'm going to predict this goes nowhere. It doesn't look like the US has excessively high Alzheimers rates compared to countries that use less cars. The Netherlands still has plenty of Alzheimers diagnoses. I feel like you'd expect to see more regional variation if we could tie it to something like tires.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

    Bikes have vulcanized tires too.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago

    Bike tires have less mass, accumulate much smaller mileage in a given time period, and are under far less mechanical stress than motor vehicle tires, so it's likely that they barely contribute to the overall shedding of these chemicals into the environment.

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    • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I'm seeing "computer models" and "computer predictions" but I'm reading 'AI'.

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago*

    Signal to noise detection in machine learning /= generative LLMs or agentic bullshit. This type of machine learning really does have a lot of application. It isn't what the AI industry is snake-oil selling cities to build data centers and murder our planet.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    maybe, but AI systems used for scientific research are fundamentally different from the slop machines available to the public. they're designed for a single very specific purpose from a relevant dataset and the results are checked by experts; it's not just the entire internet regurgitated by an LLM and trained by a 22-year-old nepo-baby with an MBA

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