Another marvelous Saturday and another wonderful news dump.

Locally the weather has been hot….the garden is still producing….blueberries, tomatoes, peppers….figs are a couple weeks away.  We have been enjoying the fresh delicious produce.

Traffic on IST this past week has been slow….I hope it is because the weather has been cooperating and people are out enjoying themselves…..but I am truly thankful for those loyal and committed readers that visit and comment every day….I cannot thank them enough.

I will start with a fad that I do not understand…Tattoos.  What is the point of becoming the illustrated man/woman?

A woman of Samoan descent is upset at the tattoos….the traditional ones that are now trendy among those that want to waste money.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/morgansloss1/non-polynesians-with-polynesian-tattoos

I agree with her and as well with non-NA that gets Native American tattoos….it is disrespectful.

Most anyone that cares about the environment knows of the floating island of plastic debris in the Pacific….there is now a possible help in its control….

A fungus living in the sea can break down the plastic polyethylene, provided it has first been exposed to UV radiation from sunlight. Researchers from, among others, NIOZ published their results in the journal Science of the Total Environment. They expect that many more plastic degrading fungi are living in deeper parts of the ocean.

The fungus Parengyodontium album lives together with other marine microbes in thin layers on plastic litter in the ocean. Marine microbiologists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) discovered that the fungus is capable of breaking down particles of the plastic polyethylene (PE), the most abundant of all plastics that have ended up in the ocean.

The NIOZ researchers cooperated with colleagues from Utrecht University, the Ocean Cleanup Foundation and research institutes in Paris, Copenhagen and St Gallen, Switzerland. The finding allows the fungus to join a very short list of plastic-degrading marine fungi: only four species have been found to date. A larger number of bacteria was already known to be able to degrade plastic.

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-fungus-ocean-plastic.html

Mother Nature seems to always provide an answer of the stupidity of us humans.

Dead and a elected representative…..

Rep. Donald Payne Jr. died in April, but that didn’t stop him from winning New Jersey’s Democratic primary for his onetime House of Representatives seat Tuesday. Payne had been running for re-election unopposed when he died at age 65, and the filing deadline for the primary passed before his death, the New York Post reports. New Jersey’s filing rules did not allow anyone to replace him in the primary after his death, so a special primary election, which the Washington Examiner reports will be competitive, is planned for July 16. Nearly a dozen Democrats have already said they will run, Fox News reports.

The winner of that contest will likely win the special general election in September in the deep-blue district, which includes Newark, and will finish Payne’s term, which ends in January. Democrats also need to find someone to run in the regular general election in November for the term that starts in 2025. Payne was a “much-beloved congressman” who held his seat for more than a decade, per the Post. His father, Donald Payne Sr., was the state’s first Black congressman and held the seat before his son; he served for decades until his death in 2012.

Dead he will do less harm to the country than is alive cohorts.

Louisiana has a solution for sex abusers…..

Louisiana judges could order surgical castration for people convicted of sex crimes against young children under legislation approved Monday, and if Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signs it into law, the state apparently would be the first with such a punishment. The GOP-controlled Legislature passed the bill that gives judges the option to sentence someone to surgical castration after they have been convicted of certain aggravated sex crimes—including rape, incest, and molestation—against a child under 13, per the AP. A handful of states—including California, Florida, and Texas—have laws allowing for chemical castration. In some of those states, offenders can opt for the surgical procedure. But the National Conference of State Legislatures said it’s unaware of any states that allow judges to impose surgical castration.

For more than 16 years, judges in Louisiana have been allowed to order those convicted of such crimes to receive chemical castration, though that punishment is rarely issued. Chemical castration uses medications that block testosterone production to decrease sex drive; surgical castration is a much more invasive procedure. “This is a consequence,” Republican state Sen. Valarie Hodges said in April. “It’s a step over and beyond just going to jail and getting out.” The bill received overwhelming approval in both of the GOP-dominated chambers. Votes against the bill mainly came from Democrats. However, a Democratic lawmaker—state Sen. Regina Barrow—authored the legislation.

If the bill becomes law, it can be applied only to those who’ve been convicted of a crime that occurred on or after Aug. 1 of this year. Barrow has said she hopes the legislation will serve as a deterrent. “We are talking about babies who are being violated by somebody,” Barrow said during the April meeting. While castration is often tied to men, Barrow said the law could also be applied to women. The bill, and chemical castration bills, have received pushback, with opponents calling it “cruel and unusual punishment” and questioning the procedure’s effectiveness. Some Louisiana lawmakers have also asked if the punishment was too harsh for someone with a single offense. “For me, when I think about a child, one time is too many,” Barrow responded.

More here.

In my opinion this does not eliminate the problem…..the desire will still be there and if one cannot perform then they will find other ways to get their jollies.

A ‘living computer’…..

Switzerland-based startup FinalSpark claims to have built a unique computer processor made from 16 mini brains made from human brain tissue, Tom’s Hardware reports — and they are positioning this “living computer” as an alternative to silicon-based computing.

And now, other researchers can remotely access the startup’s biocomputer, the Neuroplatform, to conduct studies on, say, artificial intelligence, which typically requires enormous resources.

“One of the biggest advantages of biological computing is that neurons compute information with much less energy than digital computers,” FinalSpark scientist and strategic advisor Ewelina Kurtys wrote in a company blog post earlier this month. “It is estimated that living neurons can use over 1 million times less energy than the current digital processors we use.”

The startup takes brain organoids, small samples of human brain tissue derived from neural stem cells, and places them in a special environment that keeps these organoids alive. They then hook up these mini brains to specialized electrodes to perform computer processing and digital analog conversions to transform neural activity into digital information.

The concept of living computers has been around for quite some time now. Last year, for instance, scientists hooked up neurons to electrical circuits, resulting in a device that could perform voice recognition.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/mini-brains-human-tissue-living-computer

Whatcha think?  Is this good or bad?

A study says the society is moving too fast for evolution to keep up.

Research is showing that many of our contemporary problems, such as the rising prevalence of mental health issues, are emerging from rapid technological advancement and modernization. A theory that can help explain why we respond poorly to modern conditions, despite the choices, safety, and other benefits they bring, is an evolutionary mismatch.

Mismatch happens when an evolved adaptation, either physical or psychological, becomes misaligned with the environment. Take moths and some species of nocturnal flies, for example. Because they have to navigate in the dark, they evolved to use the moon for direction. But due to the invention of artificial lighting, many moths and flies are drawn to street lamps and indoor lights instead.

The same happens for humans. A classic example is our “sweet tooth,” which motivated ancestral humans to search for calorie-rich foods in nutritionally scarce environments. This sweet tooth becomes mismatched to the modern world when food companies mass produce foods laden with refined sugars and fat, hijacking an otherwise useful trait. The result is tooth decay, obesity, and diabetes.

https://studyfinds.org/society-change-too-fast-evolution/

A Scientific break through…..

While smell plays a considerable role in the social interactions of humans—for instance, signaling fear or generating closeness—for ants, it is vitally important. Researchers from New York University and the University of Florida found that a key protein named Orco, essential for the function of olfactory cells, is also critical for the cells’ survival in ants.

Their study showed that mutating the orco gene in Harpegnathos saltator jumping ants dramatically decreased the number of olfactory neurons, suggesting that Orco is necessary for the development and life of these cells. The findings, published in Science Advances, offer insights into the cellular and molecular basis of how animals socialize.

“Understanding how the nervous system develops is among the most pressing challenges in modern neuroscience,” said Bogdan Sieriebriennikov, a postdoctoral fellow in NYU’s Department of Biology and the study’s first author.

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-protein-enables-ants-cell-death.html

That is it for this Saturday….go out and enjoy late Spring and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”