Lifeboat Foundation

One of the largest threats to human health is obesity, but now researchers from the University of Aberdeen Rowett Institute have made an important discovery in how the brain controls food intake.

Obesity and being overweight have become the “new normal” in modern times and can lead to a multitude of health problems. We know that excess weight is primarily caused by eating more calories than the body needs; however, new research published in Current Biology has found a specific cluster of cells in the brain that control body weight.

How the brain controls hunger has not been fully defined. The researchers discovered a cluster of brain cells that can be harnessed to reduce food intake and body weight. One way they do this is by turning down cells that stimulate hunger.

Rational and scientific use of hyperspectral imaging involves the selection of appropriate imaging hardware and data analysis software. Sun et al. describe applications of hyperspectral imaging in food quality inspection and provide guidance for non-specialist researchers aiming to implement this technology.

A new study has shown that food-seeking cells exist in a part of a mouse’s brain usually associated with panic — but not with feeding. Activating a selective cluster of these cells kicked mice into ‘hot pursuit’ of live and non-prey food, and showed a craving for fatty foods intense enough that the mice endured foot shocks to get them, something full mice normally would not do. If true in humans, who also carry these cells, the findings could help address the circuit that can circumvent the normal hunger pressures of ‘how, what and when to eat.’

People who find themselves rummaging around in the refrigerator for a snack not long after they’ve eaten a filling meal might have overactive food-seeking neurons, not an overactive appetite.

UCLA psychologists have discovered a circuit in the brain of mice that makes them crave food and seek it out, even when they are not hungry. When stimulated, this cluster of cells propels mice to forage vigorously and to prefer fatty and pleasurable foods like chocolate over healthier foods like carrots.

Valter Longo grew up in Italy and has been studying longevity for 35 years. Here’s what he says is the No. 1 contributing factor to a long life.

Agriculture is a cornerstone of human civilization, a testament to our ability to harness nature for sustenance. Yet, this age-old industry faces many challenges that hamper productivity, impact livelihoods, and threaten global food security.

By 2050, we must produce 60 percent more food to feed a world population of 9.3 billion, reports the Food and Agriculture Organization. Given the current industry challenges, doing that with a farming-as-usual approach could be tricky. Moreover, this would extend the heavy toll we already place on our natural resources.

This is where Artificial Intelligence can come to our rescue. The AI in Agriculture Market is projected to grow from $1.7 billion in 2023 to $4.7 billion by 2028, highlighting the pivotal role of advanced technologies in this sector. This article explores three significant issues agriculture faces today and shows how AI is helping tackle them using real-world examples.

Scientists have developed a sustainable method to make high-performance plastics from agricultural leftovers, turning them into valuable materials.

In our rapidly industrialized world, the quest for sustainable materials has never been more urgent. Plastics, ubiquitous in daily life, pose significant environmental challenges, primarily due to their fossil fuel origins and problematic disposal.

Now, a study led by Jeremy Luterbacher’s team at EPFL unveils a pioneering approach to producing high-performance plastics from renewable resources.

Since ChatGPT debuted in the fall of 2022, much of the interest in generative AI has centered around large language models. Large language models, or LLMs, are the giant compute-intensive computer models that are powering the chatbots and image generators that seemingly everyone is using and talking about nowadays.

While there’s no doubt that LLMs produce impressive and human-like responses to most prompts, the reality is most general-purpose LLMs suffer when it comes to deep domain knowledge around things like, say, health, nutrition, or culinary. Not that this has stopped folks from using them, with occasionally bad or even laughable results and all when we ask for a personalized nutrition plan or to make a recipe.

LLMs’ shortcomings in creating credible and trusted results around those specific domains have led to growing interest in what the AI community is calling small language models (SLMs). What are SLMs? Essentially, they are smaller and simpler language models that require less computational power and fewer lines of code, and often, they are specialized in their focus.

Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants. Exploring sugarcane’s genetic code could help researchers develop more resilient and productive crops, with implications for both sugar production and biofuels.

Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. Within assemblies of organisms that seem as though they could get chaotic, order somehow emerges. The collective behaviors of animals differ in their details from one species to another, but they largely adhere to principles of collective motion that physicists have worked out over centuries. Now, using technologies that only recently became available, researchers have been able to study these patterns of behavior more closely than ever before.

In this episode, the evolutionary ecologist Iain Couzin talks with co-host Steven Strogatz about how and why animals exhibit collective behaviors, flocking as a form of biological computation, and some of the hidden fitness advantages of living as part of a self-organized group rather than as an individual. They also discuss how an improved understanding of swarming pests such as locusts could help to protect global food security.

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