Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 1736

Cellulose is the primary component of the cell walls of plants, making it the most common polymer on Earth. It’s responsible for the properties of materials like wood and cotton and is the primary component of dietary fiber, so it’s hard to overstate its importance to humanity.

Given its ubiquity and the fact that it’s composed of a bunch of sugar molecules linked together, its toughness makes it very difficult to use as a food source. The animals that manage to extract significant calories from cellulose typically do so via specialized digestive tracts that provide a home for symbiotic bacteria—think of the extra stomachs of cows and other ruminants.

Amazingly, humans also play host to bacteria that can break down cellulose—something that wasn’t confirmed until 2003 (long after I’d wrapped up my education). Now, a new study indicates that we’re host to a mix of cellulose-eating bacteria, some via our primate ancestry, and others through our domestication of herbivores such as cows. But urban living has caused the number of these bacteria to shrink dramatically.

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A soft brain implant that unfurls under the skull could give doctors a less invasive way to monitor patients’ brain activity — and maybe allow people to directly control technology with their minds.

The challenge: Placing an electrode array on the surface of the brain allows scientists to see neural activity in far more detail than is possible with electrodes outside of the skull.

Known as “electrocorticography,” this technology was initially developed to treat people with epilepsy, but it’s also been used in research for other types of neurological disorders and in the development of brain-computer interfaces.

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https://www.freethink.com/space/space-elevator 📸: VectorMine / Adobe Stock

The researchers are still working on the issue of scaling up production, but in 2021, state-owned news outlet Xinhua released a video depicting an in-development concept, called “Sky Ladder,” that would consist of space elevators above Earth and the moon.

After riding up the Earth-based space elevator, a capsule would fly to a space station attached to the tether of the moon-based one. If the project could be pulled off — a huge if — China predicts Sky Ladder could cut the cost of sending people and goods to the moon by 96%.

Continue reading “Space elevators are inching closer to reality” | >

Like Brian Greer has said the casimir technologies can power anything and create a free society a free utopia without the need for using any chemicals and it has been known since the 1950s in the physics community.

Previous demonstrations of the elusive Casimir force between interfaces exhibit monotonic dependence on surface displacement. Now a non-monotonic dependence of the force has been shown experimentally by exploting nanostructured surfaces.

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Denmark: A recent study published in JAMA Network Open has suggested an association between tooth agenesis and specific cancer types, specifically in childhood and early adulthood.

“Our population-based cohort study of 2.5 million live-born singletons with up to 40 years of follow-up showed that tooth agenesis was positively associated with several cancer types, including nephroblastoma, neuroblastoma, and hepatoblastoma in childhood; osteosarcoma in adolescence; and carcinomas of the bladder and colorectal carcinomas in young adulthood,” the researchers reported.

Previous studies have provided some evidence that tooth agenesis (congenital absence of one or more teeth) is associated with cancer risk, particularly carcinomas of the ovaries and colon, but these results are conflicting, and associations have not been evaluated yet in a population-based setting. To fill this knowledge gap, Saga Elise Eiset, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, and colleagues aimed to investigate the association between tooth agenesis and specific cancer types before 40 years of age.

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Diabetic medication has garnered popularity within the last few years. It is not necessarily the need for these medications that is associated with its popularity, but a side effect that most individuals desire: weight loss. Since the advent of drugs that promote rapid weight loss such as Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy, widespread safety concerns are being raised regarding long-term effects and more immediate risks such as complications during surgery.

Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy are all part of a class of drugs known as semaglutides, which are glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists or GLP1-RAs. GLP1 receptors are expressed on different cells within tissues and organs including the pancreas. GLP1-RAs help the pancreas release insulin and lower blood sugar levels, which makes these medications very helpful for those with diabetes. However, the stomach also has GLP1 receptors. Consequently, it activates these receptors as well and causes the stomach to digest food at a much slower rate. This delayed gastric emptying results in patients feeling full and not eating as much to lose weight. Additionally, previous literature has found that patients on GLP1-RAs have lower risk of adverse cardiovascular effects, such as heart attack. However, there are limitations to this medication associated with surgery.

Surgeons ask patients to fast before a surgery for a myriad of reasons all pertaining to the safety and success of the surgery. One reason includes that under anesthesia any remaining food in the stomach can come up and flow into the trachea leading to a life-threatening condition referred to as “aspiration pneumonitis”. Physicians and scientists are currently working to avoid this event from occurring and are investigating the risk of aspiration pneumonitis in patients.

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