Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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As humans age, particularly after middle age, their brain functions, cognitive abilities and memory can deteriorate to varying degrees. Aging-related disorders marked by cognitive decline, particularly dementia, have become increasingly widespread over the past decades.

Estimates suggest that the number of individuals diagnosed with dementia could increase from 55 million in 2019 to around 139 million by 2050. Understanding the factors contributing to and devising methods to detect the first signs of dementia is thus of the utmost importance, as it could help to reliably pick up its emergence and plan therapeutic interventions accordingly.

In recent years, some studies have found a link between people’s ability to perceive and identify odors (i.e., olfactory function) and their cognitive abilities as . While the relationship between and cognitive decline is now well-documented, whether one causes the other or they are the result of similar aging-related or neurodegenerative mechanisms remains unclear.

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Music:

Cylinder Eight by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Continue reading “Freeman Dyson and the Revenge of the Kardashev Scale” | >

Around the world, millions of tons of small fish are processed into fishmeal and fish oil (FMFO) each year—key ingredients in aquaculture that help farmed fish, like salmon, grow. A new University of British Columbia (UBC) study has revealed the global distribution of FMFO factories for the first time, shedding light on a critical area of the aquaculture supply chain, identifying where these ingredients are being produced, and who controls the industry’s footprint.

Published in Science Advances, the study delivers the first-ever global map of FMFO factories—506 in total, spread across 63 countries, with Peru, Mauritania, and Chile hosting the highest numbers.

“Production of fishmeal is a major issue in aquaculture. Understanding where FMFO production occurs is essential for addressing its environmental, social, and economic impacts,” said lead author Lauren Shea, who conducted this research while a master’s student at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. “Knowing that, along with what species are being used and how it affects local environments and economies, can support the development of more transparent and responsible aquaculture practices.”

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Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy has revolutionized biology by visualizing dynamic cellular processes in three dimensions. However, light scattering in thick tissue and photobleaching of fluorescent reporters limit this method to studying thin or…

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In recent years, a substantial number of established journals have received buyout offers from obscure entities, with some journals being acquired. Despite mounting circumstantial evidence of irregular behaviour exhibited by these journals post-acquisition, comprehensive analyses on this matter are lacking. To address this gap, this article examines the practices of Oxbridge Publishing House Ltd., a company registered in the UK in 2022. Through an analysis of publicly available documentation, it becomes apparent that this entity is part of a complex network of recently established companies. Since 2020 this network has acquired, with the help of intermediary firms, at least 36 scholarly journals originally published in countries such as Spain , United Kingdom , USA , India , Turkey , among others. Targeting journals indexed in prestigious scientific databases like Web of Science and Scopus, many of these journals see significant transformations upon acquisition, such as the introduction or substantial escalation of publication fees, often coupled with increases in publication volumes. This increase stems from a surge in contributions originating outside the journal’s original academic community. Their disregard for proper publishing standards is evident in their widespread use of fake DOIs or the appropriation of DOIs from unrelated documents. Drawing parallels to the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, we refer to journals caught in this predicament as pod journals. This type of predatory publishing practice not only contributes to over-publication but also disenfranchises legitimate academic communities and poses a threat to academic bibliodiversity.

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The NASA New Horizons spacecraft’s extensive observations of Lyman-alpha emissions have resulted in the first-ever map from the galaxy at this important ultraviolet wavelength, providing a new look at the galactic region surrounding our solar system. The findings are described in a new study authored by the SwRI-led New Horizons team.

The newly published research paper detailing the observations and their interpretation, “The Lyman-alpha Sky as Observed by New Horizons at 57 AU,” by R.G. Gladstone and co-authors appears in The Astronomical Journal.

“Understanding the Lyman-alpha background helps shed light on nearby galactic structures and processes,” said SwRI’s Dr. Randy Gladstone, the study’s lead investigator and first author of the publication. “This research suggests that hot interstellar gas bubbles like the one our is embedded within may actually be regions of enhanced hydrogen gas emissions at a wavelength called Lyman alpha.”

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