Another Saturday and only 5 days until the big day….

Local–The first ICE agents were seen by me at my favorite taqueria, they make the best carnitas, lights flashing and Gestapo strutting around with the masks and assault weapons….disgusting.

Our weather has been crazy….Monday the high was 40 and Thursday the high was 68….this up and down can drive you batty.

Personal–Not much to report….

This week is just a hodge-podge of reports hopefully my reader will be informed and/or entertained….

First some good news….especially for us cheese lovers…..

Is it an excuse to gorge on cheddar and Gouda? It is not. But a large Swedish study suggests a link between high-fat cheeses and a lower risk of dementia, reports HealthDay News. To be clear, the researchers aren’t saying the cheese is responsible for the lower risk, but they did see an association in their years-long study. The details:

• The study published in Neurology is based on a study of nearly 28,000 people in Sweden, average age 58, who were followed for about 25 years starting in the 1990s, reports USA Today.
• Those who reported eating 50 grams or more a day of high-fat cheese (those with more than 20% of fat such as cheddar, Gouda, and Brie) had a lower risk of developing dementia than those who ate less than 15 grams daily. Fifty grams is about two slices of cheddar or a half-cup of shredded cheese.
• By 2020, about 10% of those in the 50-grams-or-more camp developed dementia, vs 13% of the others.

• Researchers also saw reduced dementia in those who consumed at least 20 grams of high-fat cream (with 30% to 40% fat) daily.
• The study did not see similar benefits from butter, milk, low-fat dairy, or fermented milk.
• One takeaway: “This does not prove that cheese prevents dementia, but it does challenge the idea that all high-fat dairy is harmful for the brain,” study co-author Emily Sonestedt of Sweden’s Lund University tells USA Today. “For most people, it means that enjoying cheese in reasonable amounts, as part of a balanced diet, does not appear to be harmful and may even be linked to some benefit.”
• A caution: The New York Times notes that cheese and cream are high in saturated fats, and current recommendations urge people to go easy on their consumption. Its coverage ends with a doctor’s recommendation to eat other foods shown to improve brain health such as fruits, nuts, legumes, veggies—the Mediterranean or MIND diets, essentially.

My late wife, Sue, use to say that with enough cheese I could eat a bowling ball…..

Robots are getting smaller…

We’re far from realizing the kind of nanomachines envisioned in media like “The Diamond Age” and Metal Gear Solid, but scientists have just taken a meaningful step towards the next best thing.

A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan say they’ve built a sub-millimeter sized robot packed with a computer, motor, and sensors, the Washington Post reports. It’s not an actual billionth of a meter in size, but being smaller than a grain of salt, it is still outrageously tiny: a microrobot.

The work, described in a new study in the journal Science Robotics, could be a platform for one day building microscopic robots that could be deployed inside the human body to perform all sorts of medical miracles, like repairing tissues or delivering treatment to areas difficult for surgeons to access.

“It’s the first tiny robot to be able to sense, think and act,” coauthor Marc Miskin, assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering at UPenn, told WaPo

https://futurism.com/future-society/robot-small-travel-human-body

I can think of many things that these could be used for….how about you?

We keep getting reports of the problem we are having with microplastics….it has even invade the insect world….

Microplastics have infiltrated both our bodies — where they’re found in our organs, bodily fluids, and even brains — and every corner of the Earth, from deep inside sealed caves to the depths of the Mariana Trench.

Now, an alarming new data point: asdoctors urgently investigate the effects of all that foreign material in our bodies, scientists are finding that they’re already wreaking havoc on much smaller organisms.

As detailed in a study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, scientists from Carleton University in Ottawa and Canada’s National Wildlife Research Center discovered that crickets that were fed microplastics-contaminated food grew in size by a staggering 25 times over a seven-week period.

That’s despite also being given the option of eating natural food instead — which showed that the crickets were initially unable to distinguish between plastic and real food,then became drawn to the plastic-contaminated stuff.

“When given a choice between uncontaminated and plastic-contaminated food, crickets first had no preference for uncontaminated food but then significantly shifted towards the plastic-contaminated food after nine days,” the paper reads.

https://futurism.com/science-energy/crickets-microplastics-grow-size

I can foresee a scifi movie coming soon….

Our dear leader has been briefed on aliens (ETs not the illegal kind)….then I saw this article….

Octopuses have a way of making familiar rules feel optional. They live on Earth but behave like visitors with a different instruction manual. Scientists study them for answers about intelligence and evolution, and writers keep circling back to them for the same reason. These facts show how octopuses bend biology in ways that feel strange yet are grounded in real research and observation.

An octopus has a brain, sure—but most of its neurons live elsewhere. Roughly two-thirds of them are packed into the arms, which gives each arm its own decision-making power. This means an arm can hunt, taste, or explore without checking in with headquarters.

https://alwayspets.com/s/facts-about-octopuses

My daughter firmly believes that the octopus is an ET….all I can say is there is a lot of smarts for an invertebrate….thoughts?

I need to get to work getting everything ready for our Christmas meal…..so please have a wonderful Saturday and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”