That time again when I bring all the news that was unfit to report to light.

Locally–we have had 3 weeks of actually winter weather and even had snow this past week (it has been 20 years since we had any snow much less snow that stuck for a couple of days) a total of about 7 inches which is more snow than I can ever remember.  We have had temps from 9 degrees to 31 for about 5 days straight…..made it interesting.

Personal–my treatments continue and it is wearing me down…mental clarity is lacking at times, constant fatigue and short tempered…..Sue has her hands full.

Enough about me let’s jump right in to the Dump of the week….

I drink coffee and I like coffee….some good things are said and even some bad…..but I keep drinking no matter what is said….

In the never-ending debate of whether coffee is good or bad for you, the latest study lands squarely in the pro-coffee camp. The new research suggests it may boost chances for a longer life, even for those who down at least eight cups daily, reports the AP. In a study of nearly half-a-million British adults, coffee drinkers had a slightly lower risk of death over 10 years than abstainers. The apparent longevity boost was seen with instant, ground, and decaffeinated. It’s the first large study to suggest a benefit even in people with genetic glitches that affect how their bodies use caffeine. Overall, coffee drinkers were about 10% to 15% less likely to die than abstainers during a decade of follow-up. Differences by amount of coffee consumed and genetic variations were minimal.

The results don’t prove your coffee pot is a fountain of youth, nor are they a reason for abstainers to start drinking coffee, says Alice Lichtenstein, a Tufts University nutrition expert who was not involved in the research. But she says the results reinforce previous research and add additional reassurance for coffee drinkers. “It’s hard to believe that something we enjoy so much could be good for us. Or at least not be bad,” Lichtenstein said. The study was published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. It’s not clear exactly how drinking coffee might affect longevity. But lead author Erikka Loftfield, a researcher at the US National Cancer Institute, said coffee contains more than 1,000 chemical compounds including antioxidants, which help protect cells from damage.

Keeping with the consumable stuff…..ultra-processed food….

UPF products are everywhere and they’re slowly killing us. “To me, this all seemed overly dramatized and incredibly reductive,” writes Wilson. For one thing, “ultra-processed food” might sound like an authoritative term, but the definition is a little squishy. For example, the aforementioned Times quiz declared that Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice is not ultraprocessed because of its simple ingredients, while the NOVA Food Classification System declares that ice cream is always ultraprocessed. Often, determining what takes a food from minimally processed to ultraprocessed is a “judgment call,” writes Wilson.

The dietitian didn’t just pontificate, though. She went to Trader Joe’s and loaded up on ultraprocessed foods and made them the center of her diet for a month. At the end of which, she felt … better than she did at the start. She didn’t skip meals or have “decision fatigue” on what to make because it was all so easy—and tasty. It’s a tradeoff, she writes. Yes, it would be lovely to come and cook veggies from the garden every evening, but is that realistic for most people? Her advice would be to supplement UPF dishes with veggies and such as much as possible, and go easy on fast food, chips, and cookies. “I look forward to a society that supports us all affording and eating minimally processed food, and in the meantime, I will eat my Trader Joe’s Eggwich in peace.”

Just wanted to give the other side of this story…..

Beware of the ‘bacon curse’….

If you could see inside your brain after eating processed meats, you might think twice about that morning bacon ritual. An eye-opening new study has revealed that even modest consumption of processed red meat could be aging your brain faster than normal.

Health followed over 133,000 healthcare professionals for up to 43 years, finding that people who ate just a quarter serving or more of processed red meat per day had a 13% higher risk of developing dementia compared to those who consumed minimal amounts. For perspective, a serving of red meat is about three ounces – roughly the size of a deck of cards.

Most previous studies exploring the connection between red meat consumption and brain health have been relatively small or short-term, making this extensive research particularly noteworthy. The study, published in Neurology, carefully defined its terms: processed red meat included products like bacon, hot dogs, sausages, salami and bologna, while unprocessed red meat encompassed beef, pork, lamb and hamburger.

https://studyfinds.org/love-bacon-just-one-slice-dementia-risk/

I still will eat my bacon and take my chances.

There is a new painkiller waiting in the wings….

The FDA is expected to grant approval to a new pain medication with big potential—mainly because it’s a non-opioid and is billed as non-addictive. Details:

• The drug: It’s called suzetrigine and is made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals of Boston, reports the Washington Post. The FDA may approve its application before the end of the month to treat short-term, or acute, pain.
• Addiction: If the drug, known as a “selective sodium channel inhibitor,” can indeed stop pain without posing a risk of addiction, it would be “landmark development in a space that hasn’t seen innovation in decades,” per Politico. A post at Fierce Pharma cites “blockbuster expectations.”
• Big question: The drug would likely be a big player in the industry if approved for short-term pain, but its impact would be much greater if it is eventually approved to treat long-term, or chronic, pain. The jury is very much out on that. Last month, suzetrigine failed a big test on that front when it did not outperform a placebo in patients with sciatica, per the Post and Fierce Pharma.
• Skepticism: The coverage of the drug notes that opioids were similarly marketed as non-addictive when they first emerged, and testing of suzetrigine has been relatively short-term so far. The Post notes “that harmful side effects from a first-of-its-kind drug can emerge even after rigorous review by the FDA.”

Will the new head of HHS challenge this?

Start-up playing god again…..

The startup behind a Harvard geneticist’s quest to revive the woolly mammoth just received a big boost. Colossal Biosciences, co-founded by Harvard’s George Church, raised $200 million in Series C funding from TWG Global, the investment vehicle of Los Angeles Dodgers Chairman Mark Walter and billionaire Thomas Tull, reports the Houston Chronicle. The Dallas-based company, which has raised $435 million since its launch in September 2021, is now Texas’ first “decacorn,” valued at $10.2 billion. It aims to “de-extinct” the woolly mammoth, the dodo bird, and the Tasmanian tiger, also known as thylacine, per TechCrunch

The funding is “truly game changing for us,” co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm tells Quartz. Though Colossal has yet to generate any revenue, Lamm says “the investor base has been very impressed with the speed at which we’ve created new technologies,” including artificial wombs, which could be used in fertility treatment, per TechCrunch. The funding also suggests “potential intersections between biotech innovation and athletic performance,” Sports Illustrated reports, highlighting Walter’s stakes in sports franchises, including the Los Angeles Lakers and England’s Chelsea soccer club. Lamm said some of Colossal’s technologies are also “world-changing” for human healthcare and agriculture.

As for resurrecting extinct beasts, the company says it has mapped the genome of the mammoth and the thylacine and is in the process of using the gene-editing tool CRISPR to edit the cells of the Asian elephant, the closest living relative to a mammoth, with plans to implant them into an egg cell. The embryo will then be implanted into an elephant, who will birth a living mammoth, or so is the hope. Its latest funding “gives the pre-revenue company more runway to sign contracts with governments that are seeking to protect or replenish their biodiversity, while also letting it expand its de-extinction efforts into more species,” Axios reports.

Can you read cursive?

If you can then there is a gig for you.

History nerds, have we got a volunteer gig for you—especially if you’re well versed in cursive writing. The National Archives is on the hunt for citizen archivists to review and transcribe at least two centuries’ worth of historical US documents that are handwritten in the fading art of longhand script—a task more challenging than it might appear, as reading cursive these days has become a “rare skill,” reports USA Today. “Reading cursive is a superpower,” asserts Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives Catalog.

• Details: Documents reviewed by volunteer archivists run the gamut. Records “range from Revolutionary War pension records to the field notes of Charles Mason of the Mason-Dixon Line to immigration documents from the 1890s to Japanese evacuation records to the 1950 census,” per USA Today.
• Challenges: It’s not always an easy task, per USA Today: “There are cross-outs, things written on the other side that bleed through, strange and inventive spellings, old forms of letters (a double ‘S’ was sometimes written as a ‘long s’ and looked like an ‘F’), and even children’s doodles,” as well as “many obsolete terms and legal words that can flummox even the most erudite readers.”
• Cursive conundrum: Only 24 states mandate that public schools teach script to students in grades K-12, per Education Week. People notes that’s “less than half of what was required 25 to 30 years ago,” largely due to the rise of computers and text messaging.
• Interested? There’s not even a need to apply if you’re keen on diving into the archiving pool. After signing up and going through the tutorials, “just pick a record that hasn’t been done and read the instructions,” Isaacs tells USA Today. “It’s easy to do for a half hour a day or a week.”
• Non-cursive work: It’s also OK if you’re not an expert in the old way of writing—volunteers who can’t read cursive can help add tags to already transcribed records, or they can simply learn as they go. “When they first sent me a document I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t read this,” volunteer Christine Ritter tells USA Today. “But the longer you do them the easier it gets.”
• Get started here.

That is all I have for this Saturday…..go out and have some fun and as always….B Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”