Lifeboat Foundation

China’s Chang’e-4 lander contains a living experiment that could lay the groundwork for agriculture at its future lunar base.

An international team of researchers has, for the first time, demonstrated that by fixing a common glitch in photosynthesis, a crop’s yield could be improved by around 40 percent. The landmark study suggests optimizing a plant’s photosynthetic efficiency could significantly increase worldwide food productivity.

Scientists have fixed a natural flaw in photosynthesis, and as a result have boosted plant productivity by an incredible 40 percent compared to wild relatives.

Photosynthesis is the chemical reaction that lets plants turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into food, and this new hack could result in enough calories to help feed another 200 million people on our planet, from the same volume of crops.

As of now, the fix has only been applied to tobacco plants, so we’re a long way off using this to boost our food supply. But it’s an incredibly promising first step.

Continue reading “Scientists Fix a Crucial Photosynthesis ‘Glitch’, Boosting Crop Growth” »

A reconceived farming system can rapidly improve fertility without chemical fertilizers, and without sacrificing crop yields.

• By David R. Montgomery on July 16, 2018

Such a good news for the holidays! Wonderful food ranking of the 100 most nutritious foods, published in PloS journal. Notice the eighth best place- pork fat: “… 8. PORK FAT 632kcal, $0.95, per 100g A good source of B vitamins and minerals. Pork fat is more unsaturated and healthier than lamb or beef fat…” And for my Bulgarian and other Balkan friends, even better, the seventh best food is the cheapest, time-filling pumpkin seeds, we grew up with. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Physics grappled with the question of whether space is absolute or relative for centuries, before deciding in favor of relativity. But, it is only in recent years that the brain sciences have begun to discuss a parallel set of questions. For many years now, absolute space has ruled neuroscience. In the visual system, for example, it has long been assumed that there are two channels of information flow.4 The first is the “what” channel, carrying information about the identity of objects that an animal sees. The second is the “where” channel, containing information about the absolute position of these objects. It was believed that the “what” channel contained no positional information at all. However, recent work has shown that while no information about the absolute position of an object is present in this channel, there is relative position information.5,6 This relative positional information is likely to be very important for object recognition.

The first pieces of the brain’s “inner GPS” started coming to light in 1970. In the laboratories of University College London, John O’Keefe and his student Jonathan Dostrovsky recorded the electrical activity of neurons in the hippocampus of freely moving rats. They found a group of neurons that increased their activity only when a rat found itself in a particular location. They called them “place cells.”

Building on these early findings, O’Keefe and his colleague Lynn Nadel proposed that the hippocampus contains an invariant representation of space that does not depend on mood or desire. They called this representation the “cognitive map.” In their view, all of the brain’s place cells together represent the entirety of an animal’s environment, and whichever place cell is active indicates its current location. In other words, the hippocampus is like a GPS. It tells you where you are on a map and that map remains the same whether you are hungry and looking for food or sleepy and looking for a bed. O’Keefe and Nadel suggested that the absolute position represented in the hippocampal place cells provides a mental framework that can be used by an animal to find its way in any situation—be that to find food or a bed.

Continue reading “The Surprising Relativism of the Brain’s GPS” »

When a biofilm has eaten every nearby nutrient it can, bacteria synchronize vortex-like patterns to grab more distant food.

There has been considerable interest in fisetin recently, especially for its potential as a senolytic, which clears away dysfunctional senescent cells that accumulate with aging. Researchers believe that fisetin may be useful in increasing the healthy period of life known as healthspan.

What is Fisetin?

Fisetin is a naturally occurring flavonol and part of the flavonoid family of polyphenols. Fisetin also acts as a pigment and influences the color of various fruits and vegetables. It can be found in many common fruits and vegetables, although the amounts greatly vary.

Continue reading “Fisetin May be a Low-Hanging Fruit for Aging” »

Ghrelin, the hormone that makes you hungry, also makes food, and food smells, irresistibly appealing. Karen Hopkin reports.

Full Transcript

‘Tis the season…for overeating! But it’s not just your lack of willpower or the omnipresent holiday treats. No, you can lay some of the blame on ghrelin. Because a new study shows that ghrelin, the hormone that makes you hungry, also makes food…and food smells…irresistibly appealing. The finding appears in the journal Cell Reports. [Jung Eun Han et al, Ghrelin Enhances Food Odor Conditioning in Healthy Humans: An fMRI Study].

Continue reading “‘Hunger Hormone’ Ghrelin Aids Overindulgence” »