Lifeboat Foundation

One of the most dangerous but thankfully rare mosquitoborne diseases has been spotted again in Florida, state health officials say. According to a public advisory issued this month by the Florida Department of Health in Orange County, the Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) was found in the state. The virus is capable of causing severe brain damage that can kill up to a third of its human victims.

EEEV can be spread by several species of mosquitoes, including those that make their home along the warmer areas of the U.S. Though many people infected with EEEV either develop no or only flu-like symptoms, around 5 percent go on to experience serious brain swelling (the titular encephalitis). This swelling can then lead to headaches, drowsiness, convulsions, and coma, with death coming as quickly as two days after symptoms start. And even if you’re lucky enough to survive the experience, you’ll probably be left with lifelong neurological impairment.

To tackle this environmental catastrophe, U.S. companies and researchers are developing AI-assisted robotic technology that can work with humans in processing plants and improve quality control. The goal is to have robots do a better job at sorting garbage and reduce the contamination and health hazards human workers face in recycling plants every day. Sorting trash is a dirty and dangerous job. Recycling workers are more than twice as likely as other workers to be injured on the job, according to a report at the University of Illinois School of Public Health. The profession also has high fatality rates.

The U.S. is facing a recycling crisis that is burying cities and towns in tens of millions of tons of garbage a day. The problem began last year when China, the world’s largest recyclable processor, stopped accepting most American scrap plastic and cardboard due to contamination problems, and a glut of plastics overwhelming its own processing facilities. Historically, China recycled the bulk of U.S. waste.

Contamination in the U.S. is high since recyclables are often dumped into one bin instead of multi-streamed or separated from the source. Now China has strict standards for recycling materials it will accept, requiring contamination levels in a plastic bale, for example, contain one-tenth of 1%.

Continue reading “America is drowning in garbage. Now robots are being put on duty to help solve the recycling crisis” »

The art of tattooing may have found a diagnostic twist. A team of scientists in Germany have developed permanent dermal sensors that can be applied as artistic tattoos. As detailed in the journal Angewandte Chemie, a colorimetric analytic formulation was injected into the skin instead of tattoo ink. The pigmented skin areas varied their color when blood pH or other health indicators changed.

Skeletal muscle is important not only for locomotion but also for regulating metabolic function. Lahiri et al. studied the interactions between the gut microbiota and skeletal muscle in mice. They identified genes and signaling pathways involved in the regulation of skeletal muscle mass and function that responded to cues from the gut microbiota. Additional biochemical and functional analysis also revealed the influence of the gut microbiota on the function of neuromuscular junctions. These findings open the door to a better understanding of the role of the gut microbiota in the mechanisms underlying loss of muscle mass.

The functional interactions between the gut microbiota and the host are important for host physiology, homeostasis, and sustained health. We compared the skeletal muscle of germ-free mice that lacked a gut microbiota to the skeletal muscle of pathogen-free mice that had a gut microbiota. Compared to pathogen-free mouse skeletal muscle, germ-free mouse skeletal muscle showed atrophy, decreased expression of insulin-like growth factor 1, and reduced transcription of genes associated with skeletal muscle growth and mitochondrial function. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry analysis of skeletal muscle, liver, and serum from germ-free mice revealed multiple changes in the amounts of amino acids, including glycine and alanine, compared to pathogen-free mice. Germ-free mice also showed reduced serum choline, the precursor of acetylcholine, the key neurotransmitter that signals between muscle and nerve at neuromuscular junctions.

I am aware of many “Small Studies” that produced undeniable results.

Tucked away in 7,000 acres of beautiful Wiltshire countryside lies one of Britain’s most infamous scientific establishments. Porton Down, founded in 1916, is the oldest chemical warfare research installation in the world. The tight secrecy which has surrounded the establishment for decades has fed the growth of all sorts of myths and rumours about its experiments. One Whitehall official once remarked that Porton had an image of “a sinister and nefarious establishment”.

The Porton experiments on humans have attracted a good deal of criticism. It is, for example, alleged that the human “guinea pigs’ — drawn from the armed forces and supposedly all volunteers — were duped into taking part in the tests. There are still concerns that the tests have damaged the long-term health of the human subjects.

Continue reading “The past Porton Down can’t hide” »

An international team of researchers has found that the gut microbiota in mice play an influential role in skeletal muscle mass maintenance and function. In their paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the group describes their experiments with wild and lab-raised mice, and what they found.

Over the past several years, scientists have found that gut microbiota in humans and other animals play a far bigger role in maintaining health than previously thought. In addition to processing food, the gut microbiome plays an important role in immunity and in regulating cholesterol and triglycerides. And imbalances in the gut microbiota have been associated with conditions such as Crohn’s disease, IBS and other inflammatory diseases. Now, the researchers with this new effort have found evidence that suggests the gut microbiome also plays a role in maintaining the right amount of skeletal muscle mass and its function—at least in mice.

Skeletal muscle is one of the three main types of muscle—the other two are cardiac and smooth. Skeletal muscle is very much what it sounds like—the collection of muscles that are connected to bones in the skeleton that control movement, most specifically, the limbs.

Millions of people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack may need to rethink the pill-popping, Harvard researchers reported Monday.

A daily low-dose aspirin is recommended for people who have already had a heart attack or stroke and for those diagnosed with heart disease.

But for the otherwise healthy, that advice has been overturned. Guidelines released this year ruled out routine aspirin use for many older adults who don’t already have heart disease — and said it’s only for certain younger people under doctor’s orders.

A few years ago, researchers discovered that abnormalities in microbial communities, or microbiomes, in the intestine appear to contribute to childhood malnutrition. Now comes word that this discovery is being translated into action, with a new study showing that foods formulated to repair the “gut microbiome” may help malnourished kids rebuild their health [1].

In a month-long clinical trial in Bangladesh, 63 children received either regular foods to treat malnutrition or alternative formulations for needed calories and nutrition that also encouraged growth of beneficial microbes in the intestines. The kids who ate the microbiome-friendly diets showed improvements in their microbiome, which helps to extract and metabolize nutrients in our food to help the body grow. They also had significant improvements in key blood proteins associated with bone growth, brain development, immunity, and metabolism; those who ate standard therapeutic food did not experience the same benefit.

Globally, malnutrition affects an estimated 238 million children under the age 5, stunting their normal growth, compromising their health, and limiting their mental development [2]. Malnutrition can arise not only from a shortage of food but from dietary imbalances that don’t satisfy the body’s need for essential nutrients. Far too often, especially in impoverished areas, the condition can turn extremely severe and deadly. And the long term effects on intellectual development can limit the ability of a country’s citizens to lift themselves out of poverty.