The weekend after the big day….I do hope everyone had a good and safe day…..

Locally–weather here is in the low 70s and in the mid-50s and cloudy and humid and this cycle will remain for about a week or so we are told…..but at least after 6 months we got substantial rain.  Last Saturday night I thought there was a meteor which I thought was cool for over Thanksgiving Mississippi had a minor earthquake (I am sure there is some sort of conspiracy theory that can be assigned to these events) but alas it was not a meteor….

Saturday night, people across the Magnolia State witnessed what appeared to be a meteor breaking up in the earth’s atmosphere.

It wasn’t a meteor but rather was what Forbes Magazine described as a “defunct earth-imaging satellite made in China” disintegrating as it returned to Earth.

In a post shared by WLBT Chief Meteorologist Dave Roberts, Astronomer Jonathan McDowell reported the satellite was GaoJing 1-02, Superview 1-02, which was operated by the Beijing-based SpaceView company.

Personally–the big day came off without a hitch….everyone was well fed and we all had a good time. My doctor called to inform me that my immunotherapy would begin in 03Jan25….I am not looking forward to it plenty of side effects and lots of bucks….I will do what I always do….soldier on.

My Dump will be a bit thin this week for I spent lots of time fighting fatigue and prep for the big day…..

There is some news about coffee that magical drink…..

It’s not a mere coincidence that some of the world’s longest-lived people enjoy a daily cup of joe. Besides helping enhance energy and focus, coffee has been tied to a lower risk of premature death1 by heart disease and cancer. In one study on nearly 500,000 adults2, drinking up to eight cups of coffee (both decaf and caffeinated) a day was inversely associated with mortality.

Some research has found that habitual coffee drinking may reduce one’s risk of Type 2 diabetes3 and obesity4.

So, what’s behind coffee’s longevity benefits? For starters, the caffeine in coffee can increase energy and reduce fatigue, which may help people stay more physically active5. It’s also been shown to rev up metabolism6 and enhance fat burn7in some cases.

But the fact that decaf has also been associated with a longer life span means there must be more to the brew’s benefits than caffeine alone.

To get a full picture of what makes coffee healthy, you need to look at its polyphenols.

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/coffee-can-majorly-add-to-your-longevity-of-it-has-this

I recently wrote about the new ‘smart tractor’ for farmers….and I wondered what could possibly go wrong….

We’re approaching the most active part of the Sun’s 11-year cycle. Our star is flinging a barrage of charged streams of plasma and particles at us this year, a trend that according to NASA will continue well into 2025 and even 2026.

One example of how that stellar fury affects the Earth, apart from triggering gorgeous auroras in the night sky: farmers say the barrage of solar particles has wreaked havoc on their high-tech agricultural equipment.

The issue is that modern tractors are highly dependent on GPS, which is provided by sensitive satellites in our planet’s orbit. One extreme solar storm in May, they say, threw off equipment when planting season was already in full swing.

“Our tractors acted like they were demon possessed,” aurora chaser Elaine Ramstad told SpaceWeather.com. “All my cousins called me during the May 10th storm to tell me that ‘my auroras’ were driving them crazy while they were planting.”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/intelligent-tractors-demon-possessed-gps

Squirrels!  The bane of bird feeders everywhere……but what can they possibly teach science?

In this state, I’m told the squirrels still breathe two or three times per minute, but despite squinting to catch the animal in my hand mid-inhalation, I cannot see its chest rise or fall. Rafael Dai Pra, a PhD candidate in his sixth year of studying hibernation, points out the occasional, involuntary micromovements of the squirrel’s leg–one of the only visible indicators it’s alive. “We think it’s some sort of spinal cord stimulus. You see the paw retracts,” Dai Pra says as he nudges it with a finger. The movement response is an oddity one of his colleagues, another graduate student Rebecca Greenberg, is studying. Dai Pra is investigating a separate marvel: How animals undergo sexual maturation in this deep state of metabolic and physiological depression.

Both graduate students are part of Elena Gracheva’s laboratory at Yale School of Medicine. The professor of cellular and molecular physiology and neuroscience leads a research group dedicated to unraveling the biological mechanisms that enable and regulate hibernation. It’s one of a handful of labs around the world keenly focused on hibernator physiology and what examining the extreme phenomenon can tell us about animals and enable for ourselves. 

https://www.popsci.com/science/hibernation-science-squirrels/

Speaking of science….our brains are amazing and have kept scientist working for a complete understanding….how fast does the organ process information?

Researchers at Caltech have calculated how fast the human brain processes information — and the number turned out to be hilariously low.

As detailed in a new study published in the journal Neuron, the team concluded that the speed of human thought is a measly ten bits per second.

“This is an extremely low number,” said team lead and Caltech biological sciences professor Markus Meier in a statement.

While that may indeed sound agonizingly slow, the team also found that our bodies’ sensory systems also process many orders of magnitude more bits per second of other information about our environment.

“Every moment, we are extracting just 10 bits from the trillion that our senses are taking in and using those ten to perceive the world around us and make decisions,” Meister explained. “This raises a paradox: What is the brain doing to filter all of this information?”

Scientists have estimated that our brains have 85 billion neurons, a third of which are used for high-level thinking.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/human-brain-bits-per-second-thought

That ‘healthy’ diet as deemed by the FDA….

For the first time since the regulation of the use of the term “healthy” on food labeling was developed in the early 1990s, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has updated the criteria required to make the claim.

Slapping “healthy” on a food product’s label remains voluntary on the part of the manufacturers, but in order to do so, they’ll have to ensure that their products meet the updated criteria by February 2028.

The original definition of “healthy” put limits on how much saturated fat, sodium, total fat, and dietary cholesterol could be in a product in order for it to be claimed as healthy. Foods were also required to contain a minimum amount of specific individual nutrients, including vitamins A and C, iron, and protein.

While the newer definition still consists of limits on saturated fat and sodium, it’s now been updated to include limits on added sugars and the removal of a limit on total fat. 

As for the minimum requirements, the focus is no longer on specific nutrients and instead on the inclusion of specific food groups and sub-groups: vegetables, fruit, dairy, protein, and whole grains. This, the FDA says, “better reflects the overall nutrient content of a food rather than focusing on one individual beneficial nutrient in isolation.”

https://www.iflscience.com/fda-updates-definition-of-healthy-food-so-what-does-it-mean-now-77334

Now for a bit of irony.

Last week I wrote about the hunter that shot a bear that was treed it fell and killed another hunter.

Last week I found another bit of irony….

The owner of a restaurant in Vietnam that specializes in the meat of dogs and cats appears to have been indirectly killed by one of the animals he slaughtered. The 33-year-old died of rabies in southern Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, reports Tuoi Tre News. The man, who regularly handled butchered dogs and cats, began exhibiting symptoms three days before his death. His symptoms—muscle spasms, frothing at the mouth, confusion—grew progressively worse until he died at a hospital.

Rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms appear, and health authorities there urged people to take precautions by seeking medical treatment immediately after possible exposure. Five other people were bit by a stray dog exhibiting symptoms of rabies in the same province. All received quick vaccinations, and the dog was euthanized. Vietnam has been battling a relatively high number of rabies cases this year, as the Sun previously reported.

I cannot make this stuff up.

That does it for me on this weekend after Christmas…..onto New Years.

As always…. Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”