It is another Saturday….the news last week was boring….a war somewhere….a clown plays for power….and some mindless celeb did something like ‘free the nipple’ or some sleazy dress….so it is up to me to give my readers something other than the mindlessness of the past week.
How many here were SciFi geeks back in the day and watched 2001?
Remember the scene when the ape-like creatures started acting like humans because of some black monolith?
Well guess what. A structure has been found.
Scientists have found a new old kid on the block that predates the existence of Homo sapiens, according to Nature. Dating back to 476,000 years ago, primitive wooden tools and structures were found at a site in Kalambo Falls, Zambia that provide significant insight into the lives of our early ancestors.
Predating the Stone Age by a significant margin, this archeological discovery suggests that ancient hominins knew a thing or two about construction, and may not have necessarily been totally nomadic like we originally thought.
This landmark discovery tells us that this unknown species of hominins were very resourceful with their surroundings, and the structure tells researchers that they were intelligent enough to think abstractly. The research suggests that the wood structure was comprised of “two interlocking logs joined transversely by an intentionally cut notch.”
These days society seems to be afraid of everything….but are you nomophobic?
Smartphones have been a part of our lives for so long that it’s difficult for many of us to remember the Before Times, but even 20 years ago the kind of tech we see in today’s phones would have been unimaginable. As their role in modern society has increased, scientists have scrambled to try and keep tabs on the effects of all this phone use. You’ve probably heard of phubbing – snubbing real people in favor of staring at your phone. Now it’s time to introduce you to another phone-related malady that you could be suffering from: nomophobia.
If you squint at the word “nomophobia” you can just about tell that it’s derived from the phrase “no mobile phone phobia”. It describes the panic and anxiety that people may feel when they have to navigate the world without a phone. Some would be quick to dismiss this, but feeling jittery if you accidentally leave your phone at home is understandable given the myriad things that they’re used for, from paying for stuff to finding your way around.
According to a 2019 study in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, the term nomophobia dates back as far as 2008, when research in the UK found that around half of mobile phone users felt some degree of anxiety when they misplaced their phone, had no network coverage, or ran out of credit (remember that?).
https://www.iflscience.com/nomophobia-is-on-the-increase-do-you-have-it-71133
Then there is the situation with the weather….
The Gulf Stream is almost certainly weakening, a new study has confirmed.
The flow of warm water through the Florida Straits has slowed by 4% over the past four decades, with grave implications for the world’s climate.
The ocean current starts near Florida and threads a belt of warm water along the U.S. East Coast and Canada before crossing the Atlantic to Europe. The heat it transports is essential for maintaining temperate conditions and regulating sea levels.
But this stream is slowing down, researchers wrote in a study published Sept. 25 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“This is the strongest, most definitive evidence we have of the weakening of this climatically-relevant ocean current,” lead-author Christopher Piecuch, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said in a statement.
The Gulf Stream is just a small component of the thermohaline circulation — a global conveyor belt of ocean currents that moves oxygen, nutrients, carbon and heat around the planet, while also helping to control sea levels and hurricane activity.
The South has a massive drought going on…..and there is something that is even worse….flesh eating bacteria….
A flesh-eating parasite once thought to concern only those in tropical locales is now “endemic” in the US. Leishmania mexicana is believed to be spreading through sand flies in the southern US, particularly Texas, according to an analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The parasite triggers the disease leishmaniasis, of which there are three forms. Cutaneous leishmaniasis, the most common, is accompanied by skin lesions that can lead to life-long scarring and disability. CDC medical epidemiologist Dr. Mary Kamb and colleagues have now identified leishmaniasis in tissue samples collected between 2005 and 2019 from various patients who said they hadn’t left the US, per CBS News.
The genetic information, part of a new study presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, “adds credence to this idea that leishmaniasis is occurring here in the United States, it’s endemic here in the United States, at least in Texas and maybe southern border states,” Kamb, a study co-author, tells CBS. The parasite showed slight genetic changes in about 50 cases, including at least one case each year. “Those two snips, those two polymorphisms in the sequence, are very distinct between those who reported travel history compared to those who did not,” CDC microbiologist Vitaliano Cama tells CBS.
There is no vaccine available for leishmaniasis, which has also been found in Oklahoma and Arizona, per Bloomberg. Certain drugs are used in treatment but there is “low certainty” about their effectiveness and some patients who respond to treatment later suffer a relapse, per CBS. That’s why experts say it’s important to raise awareness of the disease, which is not well recognized outside of Texas. Controlling sand flies is a gigantic task as the tiny tan-colored flies, most active at night, don’t need standing water to breed and are about a quarter of the size of a mosquito, meaning they can slip through window screens and mosquito nets. “Sometimes you don’t even notice that you’ve been bitten,” Kamb tells CNN.
There seems to always be something to pee on our parade.
As we get older we have a tendency to forget things….is there a possible cure other than taking a bunch of pills?
Why yes there is.
Researchers at the University of Tsukuba say they investigated how trigonelline (TG), a plant alkaloid found in coffee, affected the memory and spatial learning (meaning the combination of “acquiring, retaining, structuring, and applying information related to the surrounding physical environment”) of mice in a lab experiment.
Results: After ingesting TG for 30 days, the mice had a “significant improvement” in their performances in a widely used clinical test called the Morris water maze.
The test involves putting mice in a tub of cloudy water, and tracking how well they can remember the location of a raised platform under the surface, so that they can swim toward it, climb on the platform, and get out of the water.
Since I drink lots of coffee I am pretty good at remembering things….could coffee be the answer?
Enjoy your Saturday…..and as always…..Be Well and Be Safe….
I Read, I Write, You KNow
“lego ergo scribo”