Another week comes to an end and the news is just as dismal as the week before….the only news is that after 90+ days of no rain we finally got the wet stuff.

On the international front…..war has come to Gaza and as usual the civilians are paying the price….is there still a war in Ukraine?  Biden will get his check from AIPC…..

Onward and upward!

If you are a vegetarian then your choice may not have been voluntary….it could be in your gens.

A love of lentils could be something passed down through the generations, according to researchers who compared the genes of 5,000 vegetarians to those of more than 320,000 others. Their study, published in the journal PLOS Onelast week, found that three genes had a strong link to vegetarianism and another 31 had a potential association, Gizmodo reports. Two of the genes with a strong link were associated with how fats, aka lipids, are metabolized. The researchers suspect there could be a lipid nutrient in meat that some people need more than others.

“Dietary choices involve an interplay between the physiologic effects of dietary items, their metabolism, and taste perception, all of which are strongly influenced by genetics,” wrote the researchers, who used data from the UK Biobank project. The vegetarians in the study were people who said they hadn’t eaten meat or fish in at least a year.

The researchers say more studies are needed to fully explain the genetic factors involved. They say they became interested in the subject because many people find it difficult to follow a strict vegetarian diet, with almost 50% of self-identified vegetarians having consumed meat or fish products in the previous year, according to one study. “A lot of people who want to be vegetarian are perhaps not able to,” lead researcher Dr. Nabeel Yaseen of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine tells NPR. “We wanted to know if genetics is part of the reason.”

Remember that is ‘genes with a ‘G’ not ‘jeans with a “J”.

The world is inching closer to a potable water crisis but there could be an answer…..

Turning seawater into clean, drinkable water is one solution to meeting an ever-growing global demand.

But desalination – essentially stripping seawater of salts and other minerals – is very energy intensive.

Norwegian company Waterise has patented a deep-water solution using an energy-efficient reverse osmosis filtration process.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/10/06/turning-saltwater-into-drinking-water-a-low-carbon-tech-solution-to-the-global-water-crisi

What type of intelligence do you have?

Yes there are different types of intelligence…..8 to be exact…..which is you?

The IQ test is not the final answer to that question.

Everyone has heard of IQ, or intelligence quotient, a fixed number that’s supposed to reveal how smart you are. But what if there was another way to look at intelligence—what if instead of an overall number, there were eight distinct types of intelligence that you could change and improve over the course of your lifetime? That’s the idea behind multiple intelligences.

Multiple intelligence theory views human smarts as different categories, with each person having a different level of aptitude in each. In the theory, “a person’s different intelligences are seen as relatively autonomous, meaning each one of us can have different strengths and weaknesses among the different intelligences,” says Robert Yeilding, a licensed clinical psychologist in California.

Let’s look at how the theory of multiple intelligences was developed, what the eight types of intelligence are and which ones you have.

There Are 8 Types of Intelligence: Which One Is Your Strength?

I enjoy a beer ever now and then….but is climate change coming for my beer?

Hold onto your pints! A recent study reveals that climate change might not only make beer scarcer but also take away its signature bite. Climate change is making Europe hotter and drier, and this is meddling with the quality of hops, a key ingredient in brewing. By 2050, we could see a drop in hop yields by 18% and a whopping 31% reduction in their alpha acid content—the very essence that gives beer its bitterness.

This isn’t the first popular product threatened by climate change. A study in 2019 found that the distribution and cultivation of agave, the main ingredient of tequila, could be disrupted. Chocolate could also become a luxury by 2050 according to a 2016 study, which found it will be very difficult to harvest cocoa due to evapotranspiration. Now, it appears that even beer, a summer staple, isn’t safe.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/is-climate-change-coming-for-our-beer-next/

Trying to find a way to travel the universe in the future and a magnetic plasma engine just may be the answer….

Missions to the Moon, missions to Mars, robotic explorers to the outer Solar System, a mission to the nearest star, and maybe even a spacecraft to catch up to interstellar objects passing through our system. If you think this sounds like a description of the coming age of space exploration, then you’d be correct! At this moment, there are multiple plans and proposals for missions that will send astronauts and/or probes to all of these destinations to conduct some of the most lucrative scientific research ever performed. Naturally, these mission profiles raise all kinds of challenges, not the least of which is propulsion.

Simply put, humanity is reaching the limits of what conventional (chemical) propulsion can do. To send missions to Mars and other deep space destinations, advanced propulsion technologies are required that offer high acceleration (delta-v), specific impulse (I_sp), and fuel efficiency. In a recent paper, Leiden Professor Florian Neukart proposes how future missions could rely on a novel propulsion concept known as the Magnetic Fusion Plasma Drive (MFPD). This device combines aspects of different propulsion methods to create a system that offers high energy density and fuel efficiency significantly greater than conventional methods.

Florian Neukart is an Assistant Professor with the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) at Leiden University and a Board Member of the Swiss quantum technology developer Terra Quantum AG. The preprint of his paper recently appeared online and is being reviewed for publication in Elsevier. According to Neukart, technologies that can surmount conventional chemical propulsion (CCP) are paramount in the present era of space exploration. In particular, these technologies must offer greater energy efficiency, thrust, and capability for long-duration missions.

Magnetic Fusion Plasma Engines Could Carry us Across the Solar System and Into Interstellar Space

That is about all I can muster….the weather is cooler and outside for coffee and monkey bread are in order.

I hope everyone has a good Saturday and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”