When you splurge on a cocktail in a bar, the drink often comes with a slab of aesthetically pleasing, perfectly clear ice. The stuff looks much fancier than the slightly cloudy ice you get from your home freezer. How do they do this?
Clear ice is actually made from regular water—what’s different is the freezing process.
With a little help from science, you can make clear ice at home, and it’s not even that tricky. However, there are quite a few hacks on the internet that won’t work. Let’s dive into the physics and chemistry involved.
In a Science Immunology Review from earlier this year, researchers discuss how interactions between the nervous and immune systems could impact neurological disorders and allergy-related behaviors like food avoidance.
The nervous and type 2 immune systems regulate each other via cytokines and neurotransmitters, suggesting previously unidentified therapeutic avenues.
A robot revolution, driven by advancements in robotics and AI, is imminent and will drastically transform the economy, labor, and society, leading to a post-labor, post-scarcity system with abundant energy and labor ##
## Questions to inspire discussion.
Investment & National Strategy.
🚀 Q: Why should governments prioritize humanoid robot investment now? A: Governments must treat humanoid robots as a national priority for transforming productivity and defense, with enormous investments justified because there’s no time to lose as both the US and China have already recognized this imperative.
💰 Q: What economic growth rates become possible with early humanoid robot adoption? A: Spinning up the humanoid robot flywheel early enables exponential economic growth rates of 20–100% per year, unlocking unprecedented prosperity and catapulting societies up the curve over the next 15 years.
⚡ Q: Which countries or entities will likely lead the humanoid robot transformation? A: Outsiders rather than incumbents or centers of power will lead the transformation to a new economic paradigm, as history shows leadership typically comes from the edge rather than the status quo.
Researchers have developed experimental drugs that encourage the mitochondria in our cells to work a little harder and burn more calories. The findings could open the door to new treatments for obesity and improve metabolic health.
Obesity is a global epidemic and a risk factor for many diseases, including diabetes and cancer. Current obesity drugs require injections and can cause side effects, so a safe way to boost weight loss could deliver significant public health benefits.
The study, led by Associate Professor Tristan Rawling from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), has just been published in Chemical Science, where it was highlighted as “pick of the week.”
Reducing calorie intake helps cancer-fighting immune cells do their jobs more effectively, reports a study by Van Andel Institute scientists and collaborators. The findings lay the groundwork for developing dietary strategies to boost the effects of a powerful class of cancer immunotherapies.
“Growing evidence suggests dietary restriction has anti-cancer effects but the ‘why and how’ are not well understood. Our new study reveals one way this relationship may work: by providing T cells, the soldiers of the immune system, with the right mix of nutrients to more effectively fight cancer,” said Russell Jones, Ph.D., chair of VAI’s Department of Metabolism and Nutritional Programming and corresponding author of the study.
“Additional research is needed but we are hopeful these insights can inform evidence-based dietary guidelines to improve the effectiveness of immune-based cancer treatments.”
The rapid accumulation of plastic waste is currently posing significant risks for both human health and the environment on Earth. A possible solution to this problem would be to recycle plastic waste, breaking it into smaller molecules that can be used to produce valuable chemicals.
Researchers at Nanjing Forestry University and Tsinghua University recently introduced a new approach to convert polystyrene (PS), a plastic widely used to pack some foods and other products, into toluene, a hydrocarbon that is of value in industrial and manufacturing settings. Their proposed strategy, outlined in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, entails heating polystyrene waste in hydrogen and breaking it down into smaller vapor molecules, a process known as hydro-pyrolysis.
Life-cycle and techno-economic analyses performed by the team showed that the newly introduced process could reduce the carbon footprint of toluene production by 53%, producing toluene at an estimated cost of $0.61/kg, which is below the current industry benchmark.
Employing this sensitive assay, we revealed that the integration efficiencies of the 9.9-kb attP-containing DNA donor in rice cells remained remarkably high at 80.5%, relative to the 3.4-kb attP-containing donor, which was set as the baseline for 100% integration efficiency (Figure 2 B). However, a significant decrease in recombination efficiency was observed for donor DNA exceeding 17 kb. The integration efficiency of the 17.4-kb attP-containing plasmid decreased to 42.5% (Figure 2 B), and for the 27.3-kb attP-containing plasmid, it further declined to 8.2% (Figure 2 B). Similar trends were observed in Arabidopsis, with recombination efficiencies of 51.4%, 26.5%, and 9.0% for the 9.9-, 17.4-, and 27.3-kb attP-containing donors, respectively (Figure 2 C). Furthermore, PCR amplification of the attL junctions confirmed that the donor attP sequences had indeed been recombined into the attB as expected (Figures 2 D and 2E). Collectively, these results demonstrate that the Kp03 system can efficiently mediate targeted insertion of large DNA donors up to 27.3 kb in plant cells.
Interestingly, in addition to donor size, we also observed that Kp03-mediated recombination efficiency is sensitive to temperature, exhibiting differential efficiency under varying thermal conditions (Figure S2).
Eating more high-fat cheese and high-fat cream may be linked to a lower risk of developing dementia, according to a new study published in Neurology. This study does not prove that eating high-fat cheese and high-fat cream lowers the risk of dementia, it only shows an association.
High-fat cheeses contain more than 20% fat and include varieties such as cheddar, Brie and Gouda. High-fat creams typically contain 30–40% fat and include whipping cream, double cream and clotted cream. These are commonly labeled as “full-fat” or “regular” versions in stores.
“For decades, the debate over high-fat versus low-fat diets has shaped health advice, sometimes even categorizing cheese as an unhealthy food to limit,” said Emily Sonestedt, Ph.D., of Lund University, Sweden.
