Lifeboat Foundation

As expected, they discovered large fluctuations in the composition and daily changes of the human and mouse gut microbiomes. But strikingly, these apparently chaotic fluctuations followed several elegant ecological laws.

“Similar to many animal ecologies and complex financial markets, a healthy gut microbiome is never truly at equilibrium,” Vitkup says. “For example, the number of a particular bacterial species on day one is never the same on day two, and so on. It constantly fluctuates, like stocks in a financial market or number of animals in a valley, but these fluctuations are not arbitrary. In fact, they follow predictable patterns described by Taylor’s power law, a well-established principle in animal ecology that describe how fluctuations are related to the relative number of bacteria for different species.”

Other discovered laws of the gut microbiome also followed principles frequently observed in animal ecologies and economic systems, including the tendency of gut bacteria abundances to slowly but predictably drift over time and the tendency of species to appear and disappear from the gut microbiome at predictable times.

Continue reading “Dynamics of gut bacteria follow ecological laws” »

Debate was halted amid an attempt by Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring, to add an amendment to reduce personal property tax rates on cars older than five years.

Sen. Mike Cunningham, R-Rogersville, acknowledged lawmakers were operating in “crazy times.”

A coalition of diverse government watchdog groups also panned the creation of the so-called “Christmas tree” bills in an attempt to move legislation to Gov. Mike Parson’s desk before the scheduled May 15 adjournment.

Americans will likely get Sanofi’s Covid-19 vaccine before the rest of the world if the French pharmaceutical giant can successfully deliver one.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ymI97nvGruI

Cost-per-mile estimates are rising and technical issues remain, says Lux Research.

A $1 billion solar farm in Nevada has been approved by the US government; the majority of British want weekly car-free days in towns and cities.

After a worrying spike, Germany’s Robert Koch Institute said new coronavirus infections have dropped again.

For fun, Apple software developer, Forrest Heller, pits a USB-C charger chip against the computer that landed astronauts on the moon. Here’s what he found.

Last week, the Indian and Chinese troops were involved in a face-off along the LAC in north Sikkim.

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Japan have identified changes in the aging brain related to blood circulation. Published in the scientific journal Brain, the study found that natural age-related enlargement of the ventricles—a condition called ventriculomegaly—was associated with a lag in blood drainage from a specific deep region of the brain. The lag can be detected easily with MRI, making it a potential biomarker for predicting ventriculomegaly and the aging brain, which can then be treated quickly.

Ventriculomegaly is an abnormal condition in which fluid accumulates in the ventricles of the brain without properly draining, making them enlarged. Although ventricular enlargement within normal range is not itself considered a disease, when left unchecked it can lead to ventriculomegaly and dementia resulting from normal pressure hydrocephalus. In their study, the team found that ventriculomegaly was associated with changes in blood circulation of the brain. “We found an age-related perfusion timing shift in the brain’s venous systems whose lifespan profile was very similar to, but slightly preceded that of ventricular enlargement,” explains first author Toshihiko Aso.

After blood circulates through the brain providing necessary oxygen, the deoxygenated blood must return to the heart though our veins. This happens through two pathways, one draining blood from regions close to the surface of the brain, and the other from areas deep in the brain. By using MRI to measure changes in blood flow, the team at BDR recently found that as we age, the time it takes for blood to drain through these two pathways becomes out of sync. The result is a time lag between the deep drainage pathway and the surface pathway, which increases with age.