Sunlight is a “natural insulin” that can lower blood sugar
tag > Biology
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Gut bacteria strain found to confer mental health and metabolic benefits
A strong new study has investigated the prospective anti-obesity effects of a specific strain of gut bacteria. From preclinical animal studies to a placebo-controlled human trial, the robust translational research suggests a novel bacterial strain may confer several metabolic benefits.
Term used in preliminary research to refer to live bacteria that, when ingested in appropriate amounts, might confer a mental health benefit by affecting microbiota of the host organism.[
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Time for some home truths about deforestation - by Laura Spinney
"Between 1850 and 1920, we Europeans cut down 95m hectares of forest across Africa and Asia to make way for farms and plantations "
"Conservation and over-exploitation of the world’s resources were born in the same time and place – Europe during the industrial revolution – and have proceeded in parallel ever since. Both spring from Europeans’ search for Eden after they had destroyed it at home"
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The Cost of Sequencing a Human Genome ($942 in 2020)
#Comment: This chart (and the culture that produced it) is comedic on many levels. Firstly, Moore's Law has come to an end and is deeply miss-understood: While technologists like to frame it as "number of transistors double every 2y" - they never truly inquire "WHY does it double?". Its no magic: The law is a metric of unfettered economic growth and mindless accelerationism. The same "let's reduce reality down to a singular number and optimize that like crazy" mentality seems to be a primary driver in the biotech field, with the added bonus of saying "its about your health!". Are there any adults in the room to watch Dr.Frankenstein?
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China’s Genetics Giant Wants to Tailor Medicine to Your DNA (Bloomberg) (Archive)
BGI is racing toward a world where your DNA informs your medical decisions—and maybe some of your personal ones. Things could get weird.
"There are limits to what Wang says he’s prepared to contemplate. The company, he points out, is no longer studying the genetic origins of intelligence. But he suggests that, if researchers are able to truly identify genes that produce smarts, a Gattaca-esque push for designer babies is probably inevitable, especially in ultracompetitive China, where there’s already a robust market for genetic tests that supposedly gauge innate talent for math or music. BGI has no plans to help parents customize their offspring, but “there’s lots of people who want to do it,” Wang says. “People never stop searching for interesting things.” Unless, that is, someone stops them."
Related: BGI Group - The Biggest Genomics Company in the World?
Related: Chinese scientists have put human brain genes in monkeys—and yes, they may be smarter
Related: Chinese Researchers Use Genetic Modification to Make Buff Beagles -
Revisiting Burr and Northrop’s “The Electro-Dynamic Theory of Life” (1935)
Abstract: Harold Saxton Burr was a biologist working throughout the 1930s–1950s on an important set of problems related to biological organization and the origin of complex living forms. He was a profound thinker, suggesting a complementary focus on field concepts in addition to the emphasis on particle models and integrating concepts from physics and philosophy in his work. He developed innovations in electrophysiological technique and used them to perform a wide experimental survey of bioelectricity in normal and pathological growth. Here, I briefly review his classic paper with philosopher F. S. C. Northrop, “The Electro-Dynamic Theory of Life,” in the context of advances in this field over the last few decades. Based on recent progress, it is now clear that Burr was a prescient and visionary thinker. His main hypothesis, that bioelectric gradients serve as prepatterns guiding morphogenesis, has been confirmed using modern molecular physiology, as have his ideas about the place of cancer and the nervous system in the question of biological organization. With limited technology but deep insight, he derived insights that anticipated many modern discoveries. Even more importantly, Burr’s view of bioelectricity as a convenient entry point for rigorous investigation of the broader question of self-organizing properties of life highlights a frontier of inquiry that awaits today’s researchers. Burr and Northrop’s “The Electro-Dynamic Theory of Life,” originally published in the Quarterly Review of Biology (10(3):322–333, 1935), is available as supplementary material in the online version of this essay.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. —Arthur Schopenhauer
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Chemical-Shuttling Bacteria Follow Earth’s Magnetic Field (eos.org)
Magnetotactic bacteria shunt sulfur, nitrogen, and other important elements between oxygen-poor and oxygen-rich waters.
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Former Head of Israel’s Space Program: The Aliens Asked Not To Be Revealed, Humanity Not Yet Ready (jewishpress)
Prof. Haim Eshed served from 1981 to 2010 as the head of Israel’s security space program and over the years received the Israel Security Award three times, twice for confidential technological inventions. So if he went nuts, and this possibility is always open, it had to have happened over the past decade. And the reason we think the good professor may have lost his marbles has to do with an interview he gave 7 Days, the Shabbat edition of Yedioth Aharonoth, Israel’s largest circulation for-pay newspaper, in which he says, “The aliens have asked not to announce that they are here, humanity is not ready yet.”
Prof. Eshed told Yedioth, among other things:
The UFOs have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet. Trump was on the verge of revealing, but the aliens in the Galactic Federation are saying: Wait, let people calm down first. They don’t want to start mass hysteria. They want to first make us sane and understanding.
They have been waiting for humanity to evolve and reach a stage where we will generally understand what space and spaceships are. There’s an agreement between the US government and the aliens. They signed a contract with us to do experiments here. They, too, are researching and trying to understand the whole fabric of the universe, and they want us as helpers. There’s an underground base in the depths of Mars, where their representatives are, and also our American astronauts.
If I had come up with what I’m saying today five years ago, I would have been hospitalized. Wherever I’ve gone with this in academia, they’ve said: the man has lost his mind. Today they’re already talking differently. I have nothing to lose. I’ve received my degrees and awards, I am respected in universities abroad, where the trend is also changing.
‘Fast Movers’ and Transmedium Vehicles – The Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force
For the last two years, the Department of Defense’s newly revamped “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force” (or UAPTF) has been busy briefing lawmakers, Intelligence Community stakeholders, and the highest levels of the U.S. military on encounters with what they say are mysterious airborne objects that defy conventional explanations.
Project Blue beam in full effect?
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The Grand Biocentric Design / How Life Creates Reality - by Robert Lanza and Matej Pavšič, with Bob Berman
What if life isn’t just a part of the universe . . . what if it determines the very structure of the universe itself. The theory that blew your mind in Biocentrism and Beyond Biocentrism is back, with brand-new research revealing the startling truth about our existence.
"The universe is simply the spatial/temporal logic of the animal observer" - Robert Lanza
Robert Lanza: The Theory of Biocentrism, Part 1
Time & the Biocentric Universe as Explained by Dr. Robert Lanza Father of Biocentrism
Bob Berman - Strange Universe
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"The Mandela effect is an unusual phenomenon where a large group of people remember something differently than how it occurred. Conspiracy theorists believe this is proof of an alternate universe, while many doctors use it as an illustration of how imperfect memory can be
Is the ‘Mandela Effect’ Science, Science Fiction, or Mass Delusion?
What some dismiss as misremembering could be a hint of alternate realities
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HIV-Like Virus Edited Out of Primate Genome
Breakthrough brings Temple researchers and their collaborators closer to a cure for human HIV infection. "We show for the first time that a single inoculation of our CRISPR gene-editing construct, carried by an adeno-associated virus, can edit out the SIV genome from infected cells in rhesus macaque monkeys,". The report, which was published online November 27 in the journal Nature Communications.
HIV breakthrough at Temple University gets researchers closer to the cure
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A Protein Has Been Caught Conducting Electricity, And Scientists Are Really Excited
Proteins, the building blocks in every cell, have usually been thought of as blobs of inert organic matter. Now scientists have caught one particular protein doing something incredible: conducting electricity. The research has been published in Nano Futures.
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Albert Szent-Györgyi on Water - from his book "Bioenergetics" (1957)
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Russia plans government biometrics database for fingerprints, DNA, facial recognition
Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs is planning to stand up a database of fingerprint, DNA and face biometric data collected from Russians and foreigners within the next three years, state news agency TASS writes. Software will be developed for the new Federal Information System of Biometric Accounting by the end of 2023, according to a statement from the Ministry. The database would include foreign citizens and stateless individuals in addition to Russians.
Previously: Russia To Grant Police Access to Bank Customers’ Biometric Data (2017)
Russia’s police and intelligence services will gain access to bank customers’ biometric data without their consent under new legislation making its way through the State Duma.
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Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow! signal
Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero, one of the founders of The Exoplanets Channel, has found a small amount of evidence for a source of the notorious Wow! signal. In his paper on arXiv, Caballero describes searching the Gaia database for possible sun-like stars that might host an exoplanet capable of supporting intelligent life.
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Chaosofdelight.org - Documenting the incredible lives and beauty of soil animals and soil biodiversity around the world.
