Lifeboat Foundation

“This represents a significant source of PFAS in the home environment,” said Sydney Evans, a science analyst with the EWG.

PFAS, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 12,000 compounds used to make products resist water, stains and heat. They’re called “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down, accumulating in humans and animals. PFAS are linked to a range of serious health problems like cancer, birth defects, kidney disease and liver disease.

The chemicals are likely used in pet food bags to make them repel grease. For cats, the highest levels were detected in the Meow Mix Tender Centers salmon and chicken flavors dry cat food, at more than 600 parts per million (ppm). Purina Cat Chow Complete chicken showed over 350 ppm, while Blue Buffalo, Iams and Rachael Ray Nutrish all had levels of less than 100 ppm.

It could decrease reliance on palm oil to produce biofuel.

Have you ever guessed that a leftover coffee could turn into biodiesel? Here’s a remarkable development for bioscience. Seemingly, Aston University scientists produced high-quality biodiesel microalgae fed on leftover coffee. According to Aston University’s release, this development is also a breakthrough in the microalgal cultivation system.

Dr. Vesna Najdanovic, senior lecturer in chemical engineering, and Dr. Jiawei Wang were part of a team that produced algae and subsequently turned it into fuel.

Continue reading “Researchers fed microalgae on leftover coffee grounds to produce high-quality biodiesel” »

Snoring, insomnia and daytime sleepiness can also cause loss of site over time.

Too much or too little sleep could be associated with developing glaucoma, irreversible sight loss, according to a new study published in the journal BMJ Open.

Researchers mentioned that the study sheds light on the need for sleep therapy, specifically for people at high risk of losing their site. Glaucoma is one of the leading causes in blindness, affecting millions. By the year 2040, it is estimated that 112 million people will be affected by this disease.

Continue reading “According to a new study, poor quality sleep could increase the risk of glaucoma” »

Brain changes in autism are comprehensive throughout the cerebral cortex rather than just particular areas thought to affect social behavior and language, according to a new UCLA-led study that significantly refines scientists’ understanding of how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) progresses at the molecular level.

The study, published today in Nature, represents a comprehensive effort to characterize ASD at the molecular level. While neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease have well-defined pathologies, autism and other psychiatric disorders have had a lack of defining pathology, making it difficult to develop more effective treatments.

The new study finds brain-wide changes in virtually all of the 11 cortical regions analyzed, regardless of whether they are higher critical association regions—those involved in functions such as reasoning, language, social cognition and mental flexibility—or primary sensory regions.

Months later, the trio of scientists published a paper that found that a virus, not a novel strain of bacteria like some within the scientific community originally thought, was to blame. Over the following decades, other scientists unfurled the gnarly branches of the large influenza family tree, gathering enough information to formulate a vaccine, which (hopefully) most of us get before every flu season.

But here’s the catch: Influenza is a master shapeshifter. Every year, strains of the virus that infect humans — influenza type A and B — evolve in ways that evade vaccines and, subsequently, our immune systems. This results in uneven vaccine effectiveness from year to year and also undermines efforts to pack a flu shot with a broad, long-lasting immune punch.

But we may have an ace in the hole thanks to mRNA, the same technology used for our Covid-19 vaccines. In a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and other institutions have cooked up an mRNA-based influenza vaccine that targets four viral proteins that tend to remain the same across different strains of influenza.

“We grow them in huge bioreactors in just three weeks — while regular cannabis takes 14 to 23 weeks,” Sobel said. “Our tech can also significantly increase the levels of active ingredients, as a percent of the weight, versus what is found normally in the plant.”

An Israeli company has cloned hemp cells and used a bioreactor to grow them into a substance with all the active compounds of cannabis — and 12 times the potency.

BioHarvest Sciences says the breakthrough could make the medical benefits of cannabis available in cheaper, cleaner and greener form. It has started applying for the necessary licenses to manufacture and sell its product for medical use in Israel and the United States.

Continue reading “Cloned cannabis cells with 12 times more potency are grown in Israeli bioreactor” »

CNN

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A single dose of a synthetic version of the mind-altering component of magic mushrooms, psilocybin, improved depression in people with a treatment-resistant form of the disease, a new study found.

Continue reading “Severe depression eased by single dose of synthetic ‘magic mushroom’” »

New images from scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) reveal for the first time the three-dimensional structures of a set of molecules critical for healthy brain function.

The molecules are members of a family of proteins in the brain known as NMDA receptors, which mediate the passage of essential signals between neurons. The detailed pictures generated by the CSHL team will serve as a valuable blueprint for drug developers working on new treatments for schizophrenia, depression, and other neuropsychiatric conditions.

“This NMDA receptor is such an important drug target,” says Tsung-Han Chou, a postdoctoral researcher in CSHL Professor Hiro Furukawa’s lab. That’s because dysfunctional NMDA receptors are thought to contribute to a wide range of conditions, including not just depression and schizophrenia, but also Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and seizures. “We hope our images, which visualize the receptor for the first time, will facilitate drug development across the field based on our structural information,” Chou says.

It’s important in sports and in interpersonal relationships—perfect timing. But how does our brain learn to estimate when events might occur and react accordingly? Scientists at MPI CBS in Leipzig together with colleagues from the Kavli Institute at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim were able to demonstrate in an MRI study that our brain learns best in connection with constructive feedback.

Imagine playing a game with friends, where they throw you a ball that you must catch. The first couple of throws you might miss the ball, but as you keep trying, you become better at estimating the time it takes to reach you and catch it more easily. How does your brain do this? “Fundamental to this process are your abilities to learn from past experiences and to extract time-related information from the environment,” explains Ignacio Polti, who conducted the study now published in the journal eLife together with Matthias Nau and Christian Doeller.

“Every throw of your friend will be slightly different from the previous one. Some balls arrive earlier, some arrive later. During the game, your brain learns the distribution of arrival times, and it uses this information to form expectations for future throws. By combining such prior knowledge with specific information of our friend’s current throw, we can thus improve the timing of our catch attempts.”