Lifeboat Foundation

Digesting a crunchy critter starts with the audible grinding of its rigid protective covering — the exoskeleton. Unpalatable as it may sound, the hard cover might be good for the metabolism, according to a new study, in mice, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers, led by Steven Van Dyken, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology & immunology, found in mice that digesting chitin, an abundant dietary fiber in insect exoskeletons and also mushrooms and crustacean shells, engages the immune system. An active immune response was linked to less weight gain, reduced body fat and a resistance to obesity. “Obesity is an epidemic,” Van Dyken said. “What we put into our bodies has a profound effect on our physiology and on how we metabolize food. We’re investigating ways to counteract obesity based on what we learn about how the immune system is engaged by diet.”

Findings, in mice, suggest engaging immune system with such fiber to counteract obesity.

When you think about it, it seems impossible: a microscope so small and lightweight you can carry it like a keychain. But enter the Make-roscope, an invention of Jeremy De Leon, a 28-year-old Manufacturing Engineering graduate of Mapua University.

Used with a smartphone or tablet—simply place the Make-roscope on top of the gadget’s front camera—the invention can magnify organisms up to 400 times. And because it is made of food-grade silicone and a special type of lens, it is also handy, waterproof, and will be good to use for a very long time. While the principles behind pocket microscopes already exist, Jeremy’s new design innovation provides better ease of use.

Jeremy’s Make-roscope kit, which includes an information card, tweezers, keychain, cleaning cloth, blank glass slides, prepared specimen, pipette, specimen tubes, and cotton swabs, won the biggest prize in the Philippine leg of the James Dyson Award out of 47 entries from 12 universities. Jeremy says he will use the P330,000 prize money to further develop his invention.

Farmers across the United States will be able to monitor their crops in real time, thanks to a novel algorithm from researchers in South Dakota State University’s Geospatial Sciences Center of Excellence.

Two years ago, Yu Shen, research assistant in the GSCE, and Xiaoyang Zhang, professor in the Department of Geography and Geospatial Sciences and co-director at the GSCE, began investigating if it would be possible to make crop monitoring more efficient.

“Previously, crop progress was monitored by visually looking at the plants,” Shen explained.

This genetically engineered microorganism has the ability to break down a type of plastic known as polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

Various bacterial species have demonstrated an extraordinary ability to degrade plastics, which are synthetic polymers known for their long-lasting and non-biodegradable characteristics.

Research in this area continues to advance to create viable and sustainable solutions to combat the growing menace of plastic waste in terrestrial and marine environments.

The new UAV features increased payload capacity, flight time, and a long-range resilient communications kit.

Drones have become an irreplaceable piece of technology to carry out various essential activities in fields like construction, defense, aerial photography, marketing, delivery, agriculture, and rescue, among others.

Firms are making massive strides in improving their versions of drones to cater to more operational requirements. To that extent, US-based Andruil Industries’ popular Ghost drone will get an update that features increased payload and longer flying time. Ghost is classified as a group 2 UAV, as they weigh less than 55 lbs (24 kg) and operate below 3,500 feet.

For about a year and a half, Coca-Cola has experimented with limited-edition beverages that have mystery tastes — most of them with vague, futuristic concepts and undisclosed flavors.

The latest one, Coca-Cola Y3000, fits the bill. The one distinction: It’s supposed to taste like the future. Fittingly, the soft-drink giant used artificial intelligence to help determine the flavor and packaging.

It’s important for Coca-Cola to keep customers — particularly younger ones — excited about Coke, its more-than-a-century-old signature product. In recent years, health-conscious consumers have shied away from sugary beverages, making it trickier for soda sellers to market their legacy brands. Coca-Cola has used its Creations platform, responsible for limited-edition flavors like Y3000, to try to make the brand resonate with younger consumers.

Elon Musk’s X is using its new jobs listing service to recruit engineers, and the billionaire promoted it by referencing incoming soda machines.

Video games could give ophthalmologists an easy window not into the soul, but into eye health and the eye-brain-body connection — the three-way reciprocal communication that influences our actions.

“Infusing science into games is like sneaking broccoli into ice cream,” said Khizer Khaderi, MD, a clinical associate professor of ophthalmology. “It removes the resistance to do something that may not be viewed as fun, such as eating vegetables.” Or in this case, evaluating your vision health.

In a Stanford Medicine-led study, researchers employed video games to evaluate participants’ field of vision and visual stamina, their ability to distinguish contrast, and other factors that can indicate common eye diseases.

If you want to read a long and complex article on EMF and oxidative stress, here’s one. And when I did a Google search on my Pixel 6 that has generative results, the result said it affected the blood brain barrier but I think it combined several websites as a source and summarized them. I’ll post a screenshot.

Free radicals are reactive molecules produced during the conversion of foods into energy through oxygen. The formation of free radicals is an oxidation reaction that occurs on an oxygen basis. [27]. Since oxygen is essential for survival, the formation of free radicals cannot be avoided. However, factors including ionizing and non-ionizing radiation alter the transcription and translation of genes such as JUN, HSP 70 and MYC, via the epidermal growth factor receptor EGFR-ras, leading to the generation of ROS [28,29] and resulting in the overproduction of ROS in tissues [30].

The Fenton reaction is a catalytic process that converts hydrogen peroxide, a product of mitochondrial oxidative respiration, into a highly toxic hydroxyl free radical. Some studies have suggested that EMF is another mechanism through the Fenton reaction, suggesting that it promotes free radical activity in cells [31,32]. Although some researchers have reported that ROS perform beneficial function, a high degree of ROS production may cause cellular damage, resulting in a range of diseases. These radicals react with various biomolecules, including DNA ( Fig. 1 ). Namely, the energy of free radicals is not enough, and for this reason they behave like robbers who seize energy from other cells and rob a person to satisfy themselves [33]. Many studies have suggested that EMF may trigger the formation of reactive oxygen species in exposed cells in vitro [34,35,36,37] and in vivo [7, 31,38]. The initial stage of the ROS production in the presence of RF is controlled by the NADPH oxidase enzyme located in the plasma membrane. Consequently, ROS activate matrix metalloproteases, thereby initiating intracellular signaling cascades to warn the nucleus of the presence of external stimulation. These changes in transcription and protein expression are observed after RF exposure [39]. Kazemi et al. investigated the effect of exposure to 900-MHz on the induction of oxidative stress and the level of intracellular ROS in human mononuclear cells. Excessive elevation in ROS levels is an important cause of oxidative damage in lipids and proteins and nucleic acids. It therefore causes changes in enzyme activity and gene expression, eventually leading to various diseases, including sleep disorder, arthrosclerosis, loss of appetite, diabetes, dizziness, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, nausea and stroke [40,41,42]. In addition, degradation of the pro-oxidant-antioxidant balance due to an uncontrolled increase in ROS may also result in lipid peroxidation. Lipid peroxidation is the process in which cell membranes are rapidly destroyed due to the oxidation of components of phospholipids containing unsaturated fatty acids. By continuing this reaction, lipid peroxides (-C0, H) accumulate in the membrane, and transform polyunsaturated fatty acids into biologically active substances [43]. Consequently, lipid peroxidation leads to significant damage in the cells, such as disturbances in membrane transport, structural changes, cell membrane fluidity, damage to protein receptors in membrane structures, and changes in the activity of cell membrane enzymes [44]. Hoyto et al. demonstrated significant induction of lipid peroxidation after exposure to EMF in the mouse SH-SY5Y cell and L929 fibroblast cells [45]. Epidemiological studies have also suggested that oxidative damage to lipids in blood vessel walls may be a significant contributor to the development of atherosclerosis [46,47,48].