Another week and another useless bunch of news….migrants are still migrating….a bunch of political clowns had a meeting….the shutdown is grinding it’s way to reality….
And now for something completely different…. I bring to my readers the real news of the week….
First the bad news….scientist now know when the end will come….
We may be living at the halfway point of mammalian survival. That’s according to a new study that poses a terrifying future for our planet that humans will likely find too hot to endure. Researchers expanded on a previous study that predicted landmasses would converge in about 250 million years to form a supercontinent dubbed Pangea Ultima, using advanced climate models to predict what life on the supercontinent might look like. The result isn’t great, at least not for mammals, who’ve survived for 250 million years up to this point. A hotter sun, effects from geological changes, and a 50% increase in today’s carbon dioxide levels will combine in “a triple whammy that becomes unsurvivable,” University of Bristol climate scientist Alexander Farnsworth, lead author of the study published Monday in Nature Geoscience, tells the New York Times.
The Sun’s luminosity increases by about 1% every 100 million years, per the Jerusalem Post. That means in another 250 million years, the sun will be 2.5% brighter and emit 2.5% more radiation than today. This would further warm Earth’s atmosphere and trigger more water to evaporate from oceans and land, according to the research. Water vapor traps more heat and land warms faster than oceans, so temperatures are likely to spike in the vast, flat interior of the supercontinent. At the same time, numerous volcanoes forced out of the Earth by the movement of the land would release large amounts of carbon dioxide for thousands of years, warming the planet even further, per the Times.
Researchers predict temperatures ranging from 40 to 70 degrees Celsius, compounded by high humidity. “The result is a primarily hostile environment devoid of food and water sources for mammals,” Farnsworth tells the Post. “Humans—along with many other species—would expire due to their inability to shed this heat through sweat, cooling their bodies.” While the Post describes the outcome as “the first mass extinction of a magnitude comparable to the era of the dinosaurs,” Farnsworth concedes some mammals might be able to survive in the northern and southern peripheries of the supercontinent formed along the equator, accounting for 8% to 16% of the land. But in that case, they would lose their place of dominance, to be replaced by coldblooded reptiles more tolerant of heat, he tells the Times.
Now you know and can make your arrangements.
Now some good news….especially for us old farts.
apanese scientists have been working on a new drug that could help people grow new teeth, after they’ve lost them due to decay or genetic defects.
The incredible results from pharmaceutical start-up Toregem Biopharma, based in Kyoto, have been successful so far. Scientists have been testing the drug in laboratory experiments using mice, ferrets and dogs, and they are planning to start testing the drug on humans next summer.
This would be a ground-breaking new scientific development, as currently the only way to replace missing or lost teeth is to use artificial implants or prosthetics. The new drug works by stimulating dormant “tooth buds”, which have usually shrunk and disappeared in people who have grown a full set of healthy teeth.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/new-drug-help-people-grow-31036800
A bit of food news for all my foodies out there….
It is nothing short of a miracle that those of us who lived through the fat-free and low-fat diet recommendations that were firmly in place by the 1990s made it to the age we are today with any measurable level of health.
Regarded by many modern nutritionists as the worst dietary experiment to ever befall the American people,the low-fat craze began around 1976 when the late South Dakota Senator George McGovern believed there to be a link between the American diet and heart disease after eight U.S. Senators died of heart-related issues in the 60s and early 70s.
It was at this time the cholesterol theory of heart disease was born and there was evidence at that time that saturated fat, the fat found in eggs and meat (but also in breast milk and coconuts), could raise low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol — also called the “bad cholesterol.” With far too little data and much speculation, it wasn’t long before all fat was villainized and getting it out of American diets sounded like the way to go.
Carbohydrates were what was going to keep us healthy, thin and disease-free.
Do you hate to exercise? Then there may be some news….
Scientists are intrigued by a drug that appears to imbue mice with the benefits of exercise without actually getting physical activity — but as you’d imagine, there are caveats, so don’t throw out your workout clothes just yet.
As a University of Florida press release about the new research declares, the newly-developed compound SLU-PP-332 led obese mice to lose weight by apparently convincing their bodies to go into marathon training mode, leading to a faster metabolism and more energy and endurance, and all without actually exercising.
“This compound is basically telling skeletal muscle to make the same changes you see during endurance training,” Thomas Burris, a UF pharmacy professor who led the research, said in the school’s press release.
https://futurism.com/neoscope/exercise-exercise-drug-mice
Could this be that elusive ‘soul’?
Their hearts and brains had flatlined. Yet as doctors tried to revive their “technically dead” patients, some of those patients were aware of what was going on. One patient recalled people placing electrodes on their chest and feeling the subsequent shock, per the National Post. Others “were able to report what doctors were doing to them in a 360-degree way,” Dr. Sam Parnia, an intensive care physician, tells CNN. Their accounts are included in a new study on near-death experiences, which Parnia and his team tout as the “first report of biomarkers of consciousness during CPR.” Trained personnel in 25 hospitals in the US, UK, and Bulgaria attached devices used to measure oxygen and electrical activity in the brain to a dying person’s head while doctors administered CPR for up to an hour.
Nobody’s ever done this before, but our independent research teams were successful in carrying out the procedures without interfering in the medical care of patients,” says Parnia, senior author of the study published Thursday in the journal Resuscitation. “Interestingly, even up to an hour into the resuscitation, we saw spikes” in gamma, delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves—in other words, “the emergence of brain electrical activity, the same as I have when talking or deeply concentrating,” says Parnia. He concludes these are markers of “lucid, recalled experiences of death,” widely reported to include a separation from the body, a recognition of death, a sense of continued consciousness, a review of one’s life, and a sense of “going home” only to be returned to their body, per Scientific American. Critics aren’t so sure.
Only 53 of 567 patients survived to be discharged from the hospital and just 28 were fit enough to be interviewed, per the Post. Of those, 11 reported being aware during CPR and six reported having a near-death experience. None of those six registered brain activity during resuscitation, which critics see as a failure to link brain activity with conscious activity. But “absence of record doesn’t mean there’s an absence of consciousness,” says Parnia. “Of those that did live and had readable electroencephalograms, 40% of them showed that their brain waves went from flatline to showing normal signs of lucidity” indicating “electrical signals are not being produced as a trick of a dying brain.” He also polled 126 cardiac arrest survivors, finding 40% had awareness of the event and 20% had a recalled experience of death.
We had a crappy Summer but how will the Winter proceed?
El Niño is expected to make this coming winter “drastically different” from previous seasons, according to CNN meteorologist Mary Gilbert.
The phenomenon comes from water temperature changes in the equatorial Pacific Ocean – which dramatically affect weather patterns around the globe, Gilbert explained.
Right now, temperatures have been warmer than normal for quite a while – meaning the El Niño is in full effect.
One characteristic of an El Niño winter is wetter and colder weather in the south while drier and warmer weather comes to the north – good for states like Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi which have been plagued by drought recently.
But portions of the Midwest, which have been dealing with extreme and exceptional levels of drought, will likely suffer.
https://www.rawstory.com/winter-outlook-2023-2024/
This is good news for us here on the Deep South Coast ….extreme heat and no rain for at least 90 days….looking forward to some break in the cycle.
That’s all I have on this Saturday.
Enjoy your day and as always….be well and be safe….
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In Saner Thought 