The election is all but in the bag and now it is time for the news stories that were missed….
Local–Still no rain but cooler, much cooler, temps are coming by Friday (so they say)….
Personal–The prostrate cancer is under control….(for now)…..
Bad news for us chocoholics….I love dark chocolate and it may become a thing of the past for me….
Rachel Handler of New York magazine entered the “chocolate vortex” and emerged with a conclusion that might not thrill aficionados: Chocolate’s future might be one in which they’ll have to pay dearly to indulge in the real stuff. Her sprawling piece starts with a bland-tasting box of Sno-Caps and a now-famous online screed from the grandson of the man behind Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, accusing Hershey of swapping real chocolate and peanut butter for cheaper “compound” mixtures. Handler argues that chocolate really does taste different these days, lamenting “the added indignity of being told that it didn’t.” The story digs into FDA rules on what can legally be called “chocolate,” the industry’s efforts to relax those standards, and how cost-cutting measures such as substituting vegetable oils for cocoa butter can reshape flavor and texture.
Chocolate historians, sensory scientists, and former R&D staffers tell Handler that beloved candies have been reformulated into something sweeter, waxier, and less “real.” Meanwhile, climate pressures on cocoa production and concerns about child labor complicate the industry’s future, while AI-designed “faux-coa” offers a glimpse of a world in which substitutes become more common. Handler imagines a different path, too: an industry that protects farmers and other stakeholders but charges consumers the true cost of chocolate, potentially putting the real thing beyond many people’s reach. The story ends with a visit to that more luxurious world: Handler samples chocolates from Chicago-based Vosges Haut-Chocolat. They are divine, but 16 truffles cost $64.
Read the full piece.
That ought to kick Halloween in the ass.
CDC has served up a list to threats from ‘superbugs’….
Drug-resistant germs are causing nearly 10 million infections and more than 50,000 deaths in the US each year, the CDC warns in a sweeping new report on “superbugs.” The agency identifies 19 pathogens of concern, with four labeled “urgent” threats: the fast-spreading hospital fungus Candida auris; two families of bacteria that can defeat last-resort antibiotics (carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter and Enterobacterales); and drug-resistant gonorrhea. Hospital-linked infections alone account for over 42,000 deaths and almost $12 billion in annual costs, the Washington Post reports.
Clostridioides difficile, which can cause life-threatening colon inflammation, was listed as an urgent threat in 2019 but has now been downgraded to serious. Scientists say the landscape is shifting, not easing, the Post reports. C. auris infections have jumped more than tenfold since 2019, drug-resistant meningitis has been bumped up to a “serious” threat, and six additional pathogens—ranging from ringworm-causing fungi to whooping cough bacteria—have landed on a federal watch list.
Antimicrobial resistance threatens modern medicine and puts millions of Americans at risk every year,” CDC Director Erica Schwartz said in a statement. “This data shows both the progress we’ve made and the significant work that remains.” Experts tell ABC News that an “arms race,” starting with penicillin, has been going on since the 1940s, with bacteria developing mutations that allow them to withstand antibiotics, leaving doctors with fewer options. Medical professionals recommend taking steps to avoid infections, including washing hands regularly and staying up to date with vaccinations.
This is a warning for you tea drinkers….you know who you are…..
If your cup of tea was brewed with a plastic teabag, you may also be getting a mouthful of thousands of microplastics, as well as endocrine-disrupting chemicals like phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA).
Scientists from Recep Tayyip Erdogan University tested 14 bagged and 14 loose-leaf tea brands, including black tea and green tea, bought from supermarkets in Turkey.
Of the 14 bagged brands, only four had plastic bags made of polyamide, a type of nylon, while the other 10 were made of paper or cellulose. They dunked the plastic-bag teas in freshly boiled water for three minutes, then counted the particles.
The plastic tea bags shed between 555 and 2,498 particles per cup. By comparison, the loose-leaf tea only contained around 0.3 to 2.4 particles per cup, which likely come from the environment, farming, and factory equipment.
Is there a dementia crisis on the horizon….
By 2050, a recent forecast says, nearly 25 million people around the world could develop dementia each year. That’s a huge increase on previous estimates and begs the urgent question: what can we do about it?
As with many of the big dilemmas in science, people are divided on the best way to approach the issue and the most urgent priorities for research. We didn’t want to ask just one expert for their take; instead, we’re bringing you three different perspectives from scientists addressing this question from a range of angles.
Fernando Gonzalez Ortiz, MD, PhD is a doctor and neuroscientist at the University of Gothenburg who specializes in blood-based biomarkers for the detection of neurological disease.
Dr Anna Mallach is an Edmond and Lily Safra Research Fellow at Imperial College London and Emerging Leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute who studies how the brain’s glia cells contribute to neurodegeneration.
Remember when they started pushing paper straws over plastic?
Paper straws may boast a “greener” image, but a new South Korean study says they’re worse on paper than old-school plastic. A government-commissioned life-cycle analysis found that paper straws scored more than six times higher than plastic straws on a measure of cancer-related environmental impact, and roughly double on acidification, per the Korea Herald. Bio-based polyethylene straws fared worst of all, with more than 16 times the carcinogenic impact of plastic.
Across 16 categories, conventional plastic straws had the lowest impact in 10, including the climate change and human toxicity categories. Bio-PE topped 10 categories for harm, while paper and biodegradable plastics led in other categories. Researchers also noted that all straw types are tough to recycle and urged cafes, restaurants, and other venues to stop handing out disposable straws by default and provide them only on request.
The lawmaker who unveiled the new research says instead of an outright ban on plastic straws themselves, he advocates for a governmental “shift toward substantive reduction policies that cut the use of disposable products” altogether, per Packaging Insights, which notes that the cited figures “measure potential emission-based risks across the entire manufacturing and disposal chain rather than direct health risks to consumers during everyday use.” The South China Morning Post, meanwhile, details various parts of the world that have banned single-use plastic straws.
This is a fascinating study on the brain….
When you watch a video, it’s just a long series of still images. The sensation feels fluid, though, appearing seamless even though a second of theatrical film takes about 24 still frames to animate.
Typically, all 24 frames are full of similar images from a recording or animation. But how would our brains respond if only some of those frames of film contained footage of a movie, and the rest of the frames were random junk?
That’s the question more or less posed by a new pre-print study by neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, which found evidence that our brains might be flashing between conscious and unconscious stimuli at a rate of about 15 times per second.
The study, first flagged by Science Alert, basically points to the intriguing possibility that our brains are selectively filtering out unnecessary stimuli — almost smoothing out the way we process static frames of film, to continue the video metaphor — from our conscious minds
https://futurism.com/health-medicine/scientists-evidence-human-brain-different-realities
Ever wanted your own school?
Reporters at ProPublica decided to see how hard it is to open a private school in states now funneling money to them—and discovered that it’s not very hard at all. Journalists from the outlet teamed with local reporters in Arkansas, West Virginia, and North Carolina to easily establish schools in all three states. There was no subterfuge: They used their real names and their news organizations’ email addresses. “In Arkansas, all it took was a few clicks on the Arkansas secretary of state website, $45, and an American flag to form a bona fide private school,” they write. In West Virginia, a handwritten note on notebook paper and proof of a high school diploma were enough to launch a “microschool” that could enroll unlimited students.
Only in North Carolina did the experiment hit a speed bump, when officials insisted on school-specific fire and sanitation inspections for the brewery from which they’d filed to open. Throughout the experiment, no one asked about their teaching experience, curriculum, or how they’d track learning. “And yet we could enroll students in two states right now, if we wanted to,” they write. “Arkansas even suggested ways our school could accept public money through the state’s voucher-style program.” The story sits inside ProPublica’s broader investigation into how voucher programs are fueling rapid growth of lightly regulated private schools.
Read the full story for details on the process in each of the three states.