Modern Living: Much-hyped intermittent fasting diet is bunk, study finds

 

Much-hyped intermittent fasting diet is bunk, study finds

By Lauren Steussy,  New York Post, September 29, 2020

https://nypost.com/2020/09/29/much-hyped-intermittent-fasting-diet-is-bunk-study-finds/

Alamy Stock Photo

One of the buzziest diet trends of the past several years has been debunked.

A new study has found that intermittent fasting — a celebrity-favored diet in which eating is limited to about an 8-hour window during the day — does not help people lose weight, and may even result in a loss of muscle mass.

The study by researchers from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) found that those who intermittently fasted for 12 weeks only lost a half-pound more than a group of people who ate normally. Previous studies of the diet promised a range of benefits, from weight loss to longevity; however, much of the research only studied mice.

The new findings, published in JAMA Internal Medicine following a clinical trial, were shocking to the researchers — one of whom was even on the diet himself for seven years.

The Best Strategy To Use For Much-hyped intermittent fasting diet is bunk, study finds, Rebecca Torres, Sep. 30, 2020

“I went into this hoping to demonstrate that this thing I’ve been doing for years works,” lead author and UCSF cardiologist Dr. Ethan Weiss told CNBC. “But as soon as I saw the data, I stopped.”

It upends years of hype, especially among Silicon Valley biohacking types, who touted fasting as a way to stay healthy, be productive and live longer. Among its most loyal devotees were Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. But even average Joes combined it with healthier lifestyle choices to drop pounds. Last year, a version of it was the most-searched diet trend of the year.

In reality, however, it appeared no one on the diet alone loses a statistically significant amount of weight, according to the study, which enlisted 116 overweight or obese participants. It also had little effect on blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

In fact, it even had some adverse effects. Some of the participants on the diet actually experienced lean muscle loss, the study found.

Previous research touting the weight-loss benefits of intermittent fasting came with a caveat that any resultant fat loss may have had more to do with calorie restriction, since fewer hours of eating a day generally meant fewer opportunities to overindulge.

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Many more people are being diagnosed as bipolar, but those diagnoses are often wrong

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020, by Mark D. Rego
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-people-bipolar-wrong.html

Bipolar disorder is characterized by transitions between depression and mania. Credit: Wikipedia

The diagnosis of 'bipolar disorder' is tossed around these days with alarming regularity. Declaring with great seriousness that someone is bipolar now means that because their moods change rapidly they will be treated for a serious mental illness they likely do not have.
The truth may be more complex, but is usually much simpler. Unfortunately, mental health professionals are the greatest proponents of this mistake. Patients are left not only with a misunderstanding of their condition but with excessive medication and continued suffering.

As a semi-retired psychiatrist, I supervise a small number of clinicians and review clinical charts. I see the diagnosis of bipolar disorder appearing in charts with implausible frequency. As a rule, I believe none of these diagnoses without proof. Unfortunately, my skepticism is usually born out.

Beginning in the 1990s and stretching into the 2000s, we saw the changes begin. For people admitted to psychiatric hospitals, there was a four-fold increase in the diagnosis for children and about 50% for adults. For out-patients, we see what all the fuss is about. There had been up to a 40-fold increase in the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and a doubling in adults.
Although there has been some correction in children, in adults the trend continues upward.

The chief area of confusion is seeing moodiness and rapid mood changes (negative moods, anger outbursts, mood lability) along with impulsivity (e.g., spending a lot of money without thought for the consequences) as indicative of bipolar disorder. While these might be important clues, they do not constitute the actual illness. In reality, they are common aspects of many problems, including depression, substance abuse, personality disorders and even reactions to stress. By themselves, they serve only to invite more specific questions.

Bipolar disorder is a severe psychiatric disorder. It consists of alternating depression and manias, which often lead to hospitalizations and a chronic course of illness. Patients' lives are chaotic, with loss of jobs and relationships and many associated problems like drug and alcohol abuse and cognitive impairment. There are, of course, exceptions, but generally people who function well in their homes and careers do not have bipolar disorder.

The key aspect in the illness is the existence of manias. These are episodes of several days to weeks (not minutes or hours) in which the person has very high energy, so high that they can go with little or no sleep for days without being tired; very high levels of activity such as rapid speech, excessive goal-directed activities (e.g. cleaning, doing repairs) and doing uncharacteristic things (spending, sexual or grandiose in nature); and have a clearly high mood. The high may be bright and expansive or very irritable. In cases that go untreated, the person may become fully psychotic, with delusions and hallucinations.

In true mania, all of these things appear for a significant time period - several days to weeks. Parts of this, or acting like this, for shorter periods is not mania. Examination usually finds another clear explanation, such as drunkenness, other drug use or, commonly, depression manifesting in anger.

The manias alternate with depressions, which look just like other depressions. There is usually an interlude of normalcy between periods of manias and depressions. As the person has more and more episodes of illness, the time between becomes shorter, until there is no normal mood at all.

In spite of these clear diagnostic criteria, patients who do not remotely fit them are constantly being diagnosed. The misunderstanding is the belief that changes in mood, energy or behavior of any worrisome kind must be bipolar disorder. They are not. Normal depressions often produce anger, mood tantrums and a range of emotional responses. As a matter of frequency, these changes from regular depression are much more common than from bipolar disorder.

Spending too much money, having an affair, gambling, losing your temper, changing moods quickly, not sleeping, feeling energetic, being grandiose, talking too fast, having rapid thoughts, and many more things do not necessarily indicate bipolar disorder. All of these happen more frequently in depression, substance abuse, personality disorders and just being human than because of bipolar disorder. Any of them may be a clue about a bipolar diagnosis. But truly bipolar individuals have the full syndrome.

There have been several converging pathways that have led to the current situation. Outdated teaching and over-reliance on questionnaires play large roles here. Newer medicines have an ongoing influence. As stronger medicines have effects on most mood problems, they give the appearance of helping bipolar disorder, when all they have done is partially treat a depression (calming anger outbursts is a common example).

This issue has become so widespread that it engulfs many thousands of people who never get fully better, and it drives up costs of care with the use of multiple medicines when one will do.

The responsibility lies squarely with mental health professionals to correct this by educating themselves on a clear definition of bipolar disorder and the variations and substantial commonality of depression.

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Study aims to use microbial information to inform global climate change models

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020, by University of Oklahoma
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-aims-microbial-global-climate.html

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Jizhong Zhou, the Director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics, a George Lynn Cross Research Professor in the OU College of Arts and Sciences and the lead for the study, tackles a problem that has challenged scientists for more than a decade.

"Soil microbial respiration, which is the carbon dioxide flux from the soil to the atmosphere, is an important source of uncertainty in projecting future climate and carbon cycle feedbacks," said Zhou. "Our study illustrates that warming-induced respiratory adaptation is subject to the adaptive changes in microbial community functional structure, so that the positive feedback of soil microbial respiration in response to climate warming may be less than previously expected."

He adds that this study is also unique in its approach to integrate omics data, the term for the comprehensive approach for analysis of complete genetic profiles of organisms and communities, into ecosystem models for better predictions.

"Integrating microbial omics information to inform global climate change models is extremely challenging," Zhou said. "The findings from this study have important implications for understanding and predicting the ecological consequences of climate warming."

The study, "Gene-informed decomposition model predicts lower soil carbon loss due to persistent microbial adaptation to warming," has been published in Nature Communications.

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Forgetting past misdeeds to justify future ones

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020, by CNRS
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-misdeeds-future.html

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Proven fact: we remember our altruistic behavior more easily than selfish actions or misdeeds that go against our own moral sense. Described as 'unethical amnesia' by scientists, it is generally explained by self-image maintenance. But could these selective oversights, not necessarily conscious, have a more strategic aim? To find out, a team of behavioral economists from the CNRS recruited 1322 volunteers in an online experiment which took place over two sessions.

The first session involved 20 repetitions of a lottery task, the results of which determined the participants' monetary payoff; however, as the participants had to self-report the outcomes they had the opportunity to cheat. During the second session, three weeks later, the same participants were monetarily incentivised to recall as accurately as possible the outcomes they had reported in the previous session.

Half of the volunteers were informed that they would then have the opportunity to voluntarily return some of the money if they had overreported their outcomes in the first session. It was within this configuration that the participants were most prone to amnesia, as reported by scientists in PNAS on 28th September 2020. In other words, they remembered their cheating behavior less accurately when they knew they would have to make a moral decision again, even though they could earn more money by remembering the reported outcomes. It was as if forgetting this incident would allow them to restore their reputation, making it more acceptable for a future breach of morality.

Memory misfires help selfish maintain their self-image

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Do raccoons fear coyotes?

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020, by Laura Oleniacz, North Carolina State University
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-raccoons-coyotes.html

Researchers caught raccoons on camera foraging with other species, indicating they may depend on other animals to watch out for potential threats. 

Credit: North Carolina State University

A new study in North Carolina caught raccoons on camera foraging with other animals including deer, foxes and flying squirrels and even coyotes. The raccoons' lack of worry about the threat of predation supported researchers' conclusion that raccoons are unlikely prey for coyotes.

"Raccoons do not seem to be vigilant toward coyotes when caught on camera, and their activity patterns overlap, all of which indicates that coyotes are not depredating raccoons, meaning they're not eating them," said Chris Moorman, professor and interim associate head of the North Carolina State University Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources.

The study, published in the journal Diversity, originally was designed to study deer and understand their relationship with coyotes, but lots of raccoons were captured on camera as well. The researchers used cameras, paired with bait, to study raccoon vigilance behavior.

When the raccoons had their head up in photos, the researchers interpreted that as raccoons being more vigilant. They saw raccoons were more vigilant during a full moon, and less vigilant, with their heads down and feeding, when they were foraging with other animals—even other species.

The Abstract spoke about the study with Moorman, who was co-author of the study with Chris DePerno, professor of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology at NC State. It was led by Colter Chitwood, assistant professor at Oklahoma State University and a former student at NC State.

TA: Why were you interested in predation effects by coyotes?

Moorman: Coyotes are relatively new to the eastern United States. There's a lot of debate whether we should be excited or maybe concerned about the coyote colonization. Some are concerned about coyote effects on prey like deer. On the other hand, others are excited about the potential role that coyotes might play by controlling some over-abundant prey populations.

If coyotes do control abundant populations of what are called "mesocarnivores" or "mesopredators," which are medium-sized predators like raccoons, then they could be beneficial to species down the food chain—things that raccoons might suppress otherwise, like songbird populations, for example. If raccoons are eating a lot of songbird eggs, the addition of coyotes that eat raccoons would benefit the songbirds.

Historical evidence suggests a canid species was present in the eastern United States—some sort of wolf. And it could be that coyotes are filling the niche vacated when that wolf species went extinct. The theory is that historical wolf species ate raccoons, so modern-day raccoons may perceive a threat from coyotes.

TA: What did you find about raccoons in your study?

Moorman: We were able to look at the indirect effect of coyotes on raccoons in two ways.

The first was using pictures of raccoons from our cameras to see whether or not they were vigilant or non-vigilant.

The second way was to look at when the animals were active based on when they were captured in photos. If the activity patterns of raccoons and coyotes have a lot of overlap, then the two species presumably are coexisting without competition. But, if coyotes are a predator of raccoons, then raccoons should adjust their activity patterns so they don't overlap with coyote activity.

The results of the activity pattern analysis showed a high degree of overlap. Coyotes were a little more active during the day than raccoons, but both species were most active at night and during dawn and dusk periods. Overall, raccoons were vigilant about 46 percent of the time. More than half of the time, they were not vigilant of predators and just feeding. There were a few cases where raccoons and coyotes were even captured in the same photo.

TA: What should we take away from this?

Moorman: The raccoons were somewhat vigilant, but not more than expected. That suggests in a population where coyotes were super abundant, raccoons were not feeling the stress of coyote predation. This backs up many studies that have shown few to no raccoon remains in coyote scat. From a theoretical standpoint, these results suggest that coyotes are not controlling raccoons and benefiting species further down the food chain.

We also learned about the other things that affect raccoon vigilance. One of those is that raccoons are more vigilant during the day and during a full moon, and those are times when there's more light. So it could be that raccoons feel more exposed in more lit environments.

We also saw raccoon vigilance was greatest when they were by themselves in the photo. When there were other individual animals in the photo, they were less likely to be vigilant. That suggests they were using other species and other raccoons to reduce risk of predation. Some call it the "many eyes" effect. It's shared vigilance.

TA: Has this method been used before?

Moorman: This idea of using camera traps to document vigilance behavior is a fairly novel, efficient and low-cost method to get at these kinds of questions. This approach can be used with a variety of species, including deer.

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Modern Living : City dwellers are finding out camping is gross

 

City dwellers are finding out camping is gross

By Vanita Salisbury,  New York Post,  September 28, 2020

https://nypost.com/2020/09/28/city-dwellers-are-finding-out-camping-is-gross/

Christina Ramos

When Christina Ramos announced she was going camping for the first time this summer, her friends got worried.

“They thought I wasn’t going to make it,” said the 29-year-old New Jersey native, who was planning an outdoors-oriented trip to Michigan for her friend Paola’s 29th birthday.

Determined to prove them wrong, Ramos spent weeks preparing for the trip, shelling out hundreds of dollars on what she thought was must-have gear from Amazon and Target.

Despite all her meticulous planning — and a roommate who even filmed an instructional video about how to properly set up a tent — Ramos had trouble assembling it.

“When I got to the campground, I don’t know why but I couldn’t get the video rolling,” she said.

As the pandemic presses on, city dwellers are turning to camping as a safe, socially distant alternative to typical travel, with online booking tools Campspot, Tentrr and Hipcamp all reporting upticks in usage. But newbies are quickly discovering there’s a lot more to sleeping outside than s’mores and sing-alongs.

“They’re amazed by the amount of bugs that they see and the variety, and how big they can get,” said Rafael Lopez, who runs the NYC Hiking and Backpacking Group on Facebook.

His group’s membership has been increasing steadily, at about 15 people a day. But the reports from newcomers aren’t always positive: “The lack of bathrooms is what scares people,” said Lopez. “And when you do have a bathroom, it’s the surprise of how dirty they are.”

Rafael Lopez

Chelsea Janke tried to ward off potential surprises with a little micromanagement.

“I’m a stage manager, which means I’m prepared for every emergency,” said the 25-year-old Washington Heights resident.

Chelsea Janke 

And so for her first camping trip, in Lake George with boyfriend Jason McGuire in August, she had everything she needed — or so she thought.

For a hike, her backpack was weighed down by a book, Band-Aids, medicine, water bottles, washcloths — even an umbrella.

“Jason insisted on carrying it and it would get really heavy, and he’d be like, ‘Jesus, what did you pack?’ ”

Still, the rookie forgot a few crucial things, including layers. On a cold night, she had to borrow sweatpants from her boyfriend.

Travel writer Natalie Compton wasn’t totally inexperienced when she started camping regularly this summer, but she had never done it on her own.

“I had never been in charge of the logistics,” said the 29-year-old. “I was never the one packing the food and packing the tent.”

Natalie Compton

One decision she immediately regretted was failing to buy a sleeping pad: “It felt like I woke up and was hit by a bus,” she said.

Since then, she’s done overnights in the Catskills, Virginia and Connecticut. She has even chronicled some of her adventures for the Washington Post. But that doesn’t mean that she’s beyond the occasional mistake. There was the time she brought a portable charger that wasn’t actually charged, and the night she neglected to zip up her tent the whole way. When she woke up, she was soaked with rain.

“My sleeping bag was like a tea bag, dipped in a cup of tea,” Compton said.

Natalie Compton and her two dogs 

Nevertheless, camping converts say that the hassles are worth it. Janke calls peering up at the stars “one of the most breathtaking moments of my life.”

And Ramos surprised her naysaying friends by surviving her camping trip — and even enjoying it. The views of Lake Superior were stunning, she said, and the whole trip was surprisingly affordable.

But the best part? They were so remote, “there was literally no cell service,” Ramos said. “If we ever had to go into town to pick up stuff, as soon as we got [there] my phone would start blowing up with all the messages I’m missing.”

Her response was swift: “Sorry guys, I don’t have that much service. I’ll talk to you when I get back.”

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500 years ago, another epidemic swept Mexico: smallpox

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020, by Maria Verza
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-years-epidemic-swept-mexico-smallpox.html

Locals walk past a mural dedicated to Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes, in Mexico City, Monday, Sept. 28, 2020. Smallpox was brought to Mexican lands by the Spanish and played a significant role in the downfall of the Aztec Empire Smallpox and other newly introduced diseases went on to kill tens of millions of Indigenous people in the Americas who had no resistance to the European illnesses. 

(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

There were mass cremations of bodies; entire families died and the inhabitants of the city, afraid to pull their bodies out, simply collapsed their homes on top of them to bury them on the spot.
The scene, beyond even the current coronavirus pandemic, was a scourge brought 500 years ago by Spanish conquistadores and their servants that exploded in Mexico City in September 1520.

Smallpox and other newly introduced diseases went on to kill tens of millions of Indigenous people in the Americas who had no resistance to the European illnesses. The viruses later spread to South America, and helped lead to the downfall and overthrow of empires like the Aztecs and Incas. And its lessons remain largely forgotten today.

Hernán Cortés and his band of a few hundred Spaniards had been kicked out of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, today's Mexico City, on June 30, 1520, by angry residents after the conquistadores took the emperor Moctezuma captive and he died.

But the Spaniards left behind Indigenous and African slaves they had brought with them from Cuba. Some of them were already infected with smallpox, and amid the harsh conditions in the capital—Cortés and his allies blockaded the city after the June defeat.

Locals walk past a mural dedicated to Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes, in Mexico City, Monday, Sept. 28, 2020. Smallpox was an unknown disease in Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and exploded in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan after Cortes put the city under siege in 1520. Smallpox and other newly introduced diseases went on to kill tens of millions of Indigenous people in the Americas who had no resistance to the European illnesses. 

(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Historian Miguel León Portilla in his book "The Vision of the Conquered" cites chroniclers who described it as "a great plague ... a huge destroyer of people." Cuitláhuac, Moctezuma's successor, died of the disease in 1520.

The Aztecs, or Mexicas as they were known, tried long-trusted remedies to combat the unknown disease. Like the coronavirus pandemic, that did not necessarily work out well.

They tried medicinal steam baths known as temezcales, a sort of sweat lodge, but because people were packed so tightly into the enclosed stone and mud chambers, the baths served only to propagate the disease more efficiently.

"It was a massive group contagion," said medical historian Sandra Guevara,

Cortés and his men would reenter and conquer the disease-ravaged city a year later in August 1521.

By then, due to smallpox, battles and food shortages caused by the conquistadores' blockade, there were so many rotting corpses in the street that Cortés briefly decided to move the Spaniards' new capital to a town further south to avoid the pestilent smell.

A defaced statue of Christopher Columbus stands on Mexico City's Paseo de la Reforma, Monday, Sept. 28, 2020. Smallpox was an unknown disease in Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and exploded after their arrival. Smallpox and other newly introduced diseases went on to kill tens of millions of Indigenous people who had no resistance to the European illnesses in the Americas.

 (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Outside the Aztec capital, those Indigenous people who remained dealt with the first smallpox epidemic—and later plagues by that and other diseases wound up killing most of the pre-Hispanic population—by doing what they continued to do for centuries: retreat into hard-to-reach areas and try to block themselves off from the outside world.

During the coronavirus pandemic, many Indigenous communities retreated to the centuries-old ways, setting up roadblocks to prevent outsiders from entering their villages.

"We are living through today something like what they (our ancestors) might have felt," Guevara said.

Apart from failed cures and almost medieval strategies, it remains unclear how much humanity has learned from one of the greatest mass die-offs due to epidemics.

In the case of smallpox, humanity won the battle: the disease gave rise to the first successful vaccine in 1796, and the World Health Organization declared the disease eradicated outside laboratories in 1980.

The Templo Mayor archeological site stands in downtown Mexico City, once the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, Monday, Sept. 28, 2020. Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and his men conquered the city of Tenochtitlan in 1521 after an epidemic of smallpox ravaged the city. Smallpox and other newly introduced diseases went on to kill tens of millions of Indigenous people who had no resistance to the European illnesses in the Americas.

 (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

But such victories bred arrogance, experts say.

"In the last 50 years, a certain arrogance has prevailed in the medical community, thinking that we had brought all the infectious diseases under control," said José Esparza, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland Institute of Human Virology. "This pandemic has given us a big surprise."

Humanity has learned lessons from diseases, Guevara notes. Cholera taught us the importance of clean water and sanitation; AIDS changed sexual behavior.

"The important thing is how we deal with it," said Guevara. "We have to learn that humanity cannot control everything."

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‘Everybody dies’: Musk says neither he nor his family will take Covid-19 vaccine, blasts Bill Gates as ‘knucklehead’

29 Sep, 2020, From RT Russian news
https://www.rt.com/news/502013-elon-musk-wont-get-coronavirus-vaccine/

Elon Musk (main image) says he won't get vaccinated against Covid-19. 

© Julian Stähle / dpa/ Global Look Press, inset: © Getty Images / Lal Nallath

SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk has said that neither he nor his family will likely take future coronavirus vaccines even when they are readily available, saying the pandemic has “diminished [his] faith in humanity.”

Speaking during a podcast interview with Kara Swisher, 49-year-old Musk stated that neither he nor his children are at risk for Covid-19 and therefore would be unlikely to need the vaccine.

“This is a no-win situation. It has diminished my faith in humanity, this whole thing… The irrationality of people in general,” Musk said.

He also decried lockdowns across the globe and in the US in particular, having previously referred to them as “unethical” and “de facto house arrest.”

Musk said widespread lockdowns were a mistake and only at-risk people should quarantine “until the storm passes.”

When pressed about the risk to his own employees and their families, with Swisher asking what if someone dies, Musk pithily responded: “Everybody dies.”

“We’ve been making cars this entire time and it’s been great,” he said of Tesla keeping its factory doors open in defiance of lockdown rules, which at one point prompted an irate response from Musk and even a lawsuit against Alameda County. He added that SpaceX has been fully operational throughout the pandemic thanks to its national security clearance.
“Through this entire thing, we didn’t skip a day. We had national security clearance because we were doing national security work. We sent astronauts to the space station and back.”

Musk also took aim at Bill Gates, highlighting that his fellow billionaire’s criticisms of lockdown skeptics are unfounded and misplaced in Musk’s case.

“Gates said something about me not knowing what I was doing. It’s like, hey, knucklehead, we actually make the vaccine machines for CureVac, that company you’re invested in,” Musk explained, referring to the fact that Tesla manufacturers machines for CureVac. The entrepreneur also noted that he works closely with the Harvard epidemiology team which is currently working on Covid-19 antibody studies.

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Insect Armageddon: Low doses of the insecticide, Imidacloprid, cause blindness in insects

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020, by University of Melbourne
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-insect-armageddon-doses-insecticide-imidacloprid.html

Dr Felipe Martelli says studies have shown that low doses of insecticides can affect insect behaviour but have not uncovered how insecticides trigger changes at the cellular and molecular levels. 

Credit: Florienne Loder, Bio21 Institute, the University of Melbourne

New research has identified a mechanism by which low levels of insecticides such as, the neonicotinoid Imidacloprid, could harm the nervous, metabolic and immune system of insects, including those that are not pests, such as our leading pollinators, bees.

A study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led by researchers at the University of Melbourne and Baylor College of Medicine, shows that low doses of Imidacloprid trigger neurodegeneration and disrupt vital body-wide functions, including energy production, vision, movement and the immune system, in the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster.

With insect populations declining around the world and intense use of insecticides suspected to play a role, the findings provide important evidence that even small doses of insecticides reduce the capacity of insects to survive, even those that are not pests.

"Our research was conducted on one insecticide, but there is evidence that other insecticides cause oxidative stress, so they may have similar impacts," Professor Philip Batterham, from the School of BioSciences and Bio21 Institute, at the University of Melbourne, said.

"Our findings emphasize the importance of better understanding the mechanisms of action of insecticides, in particular on beneficial insects. Without further research we do not know if other insecticides are any safer."

Imidacloprid, has been banned from agricultural use by the European Union because of concerns about impacts on honeybees, but remains one of the top selling insecticides in the world. Attacking the central nervous systems of the insects, it increases the transmission of stimuli in the insect nervous system, activating receptors resulting in the insect's paralysis and eventual death.

The researchers arrived at the findings by studying the effects of Imidacloprid in vinegar fly larvae. In the field, the insecticide is generally used at concentrations of up to 2,800 parts per million (ppm). In the lab, researchers tested lower doses, identifying that the very small dose 2.5 ppm was enough to reduce the movement of fly larvae by 50 percent after just two hours of exposure.

"That's an indication of the impact of the insecticide on the function of the brain," said Dr. Felipe Martelli, whose Ph.D. work conducted at the University of Melbourne and the Baylor College of Medicine in the laboratory of Professor Hugo Bellen led to the current research paper.

"From there, the accumulation of massive amounts of reactive oxygen species (ROS) or free radicals inside the brain triggers a cascade of damaging events that spread to many other tissues."

Researchers also tested the insecticide on adult flies, finding that flies exposed to very low doses (4 ppm) over 25 days became blind and developed movement problems that affected their ability to climb, symptomatic of neurodegeneration in other parts of the brain.

"Although many studies have shown that low doses of insecticides can affect insect behavior, they have not uncovered how insecticides trigger changes at the cellular and molecular levels," Dr. Martelli, now a research fellow in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, said.

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The testimony of trees: How volcanic eruptions shaped 2000 years of world history

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020, by Sarah Collins, University of Cambridge
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-testimony-trees-volcanic-eruptions-years.html

Driftwood in Siberia. Credit: University of Cambridge

Researchers have shown that over the past two thousand years, volcanoes have played a larger role in natural temperature variability than previously thought, and their climatic effects may have contributed to past societal and economic change.

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used samples from more than 9000 living and dead trees to obtain a precise yearly record of summer temperatures in North America and Eurasia, dating back to the year 1 CE. This revealed colder and warmer periods that they then compared with records for very large volcanic eruptions as well as major historical events.
Crucial to the accuracy of the dataset was the use of the same number of data points across the entire 2000 years. Previous reconstructions of climate over this extended period have been biased by over-representation of trees from more recent times.

The results, reported in the journal Dendrochronologia, show that the effect of volcanoes on global temperature changes is even greater than had been recognised, although the researchers stress that their work in no way diminishes the significance of human-caused climate change.

Instead, the researchers say, the study contributes to our understanding of the natural causes and societal consequences of summer temperature changes over the past two thousand years.

"There is so much we can determine about past climate conditions from the information in tree rings, but we have far more information from newer trees than we do for trees which lived a thousand years or more ago," said Professor Ulf Büntgen from Cambridge's Department of Geography, the study's lead author. "Removing some of the data from the more recent past levels the playing field for the whole 2000-year period we're looking at, so in the end, we gain a more accurate understanding of natural versus anthropogenic climate change."

Comparing the data from tree rings against evidence from ice cores, the researchers were able to identify the effect of past volcanic eruptions on summer temperatures.

Large volcanic eruptions can lower global average temperatures by fractions of a degree Celsius, with strongest effects in parts of North America and Eurasia. The main factor is the amount of sulphur emitted during the eruption that reaches the stratosphere, where it forms minute particles that block some sunlight from reaching the surface. This can result in shorter growing seasons and cooler temperatures, that lead in turn to reduced harvests. Conversely, in periods when fewer large eruptions occurred, the Earth is able to absorb more heat from the Sun and temperatures rise.

"Some climate models assume that the effect of volcanoes is punctuated and short," said Büntgen. "However, if you look at the cumulative effect over a whole century, this effect can be much longer. In part, we can explain warm conditions during the 3rd, 10th and 11th centuries through a comparative lack of eruptions."

Reconstructed summer temperatures in the 280s, 990s and 1020s, when volcanic forcing was low, were comparable to modern conditions until 2010.

Compared with existing large-scale temperature reconstructions of the past 1200-2000 years, the study reveals a greater pre-industrial summer temperature variability, including strong evidence for the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) in the 6th and 7th centuries.

Then, working with historians, the scientists found that relatively constant warmth during Roman and medieval periods, when large volcanic eruptions were less frequent, often coincided with societal prosperity and political stability in Europe and China. However, the periods characterised by more prolific volcanism often coincided with times of conflict and economic decline.
"Interpreting history is always challenging," said Dr. Clive Oppenheimer, the lead volcanologist of the study. "So many factors come into play—politics, economics, culture. But a big eruption that leads to widespread declines in grain production can hurt millions of people. Hunger can lead to famine, disease, conflict and migration. We see much evidence of this in the historical record.
"We knew that large eruptions could have these effects, especially when societies were already stressed, but I was surprised to see the opposite effect so clearly in our data—that centuries with rather few eruptions had warmer summers than the long-term average."

The new temperature reconstructions provide deeper insights into historical periods in which climactic changes, and their associated environmental responses, have had an outsized impact on human history. This has clear implications for our present and future. As climate change accelerates, extreme events, such as floods, drought, storms and wildfires, will become more frequent.

"Humans have no effect on whether or not a volcano erupts, but the warming trend we are seeing right now is certainly related to human activity," said Büntgen. "While nothing about the future is certain, we would do well to learn how climate change has affected human civilisation in the past."

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How important is sex to women as they age?

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020, by The North American Menopause Society
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-important-sex-women-age.html

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Despite a common belief that women lose interest in sex as they age, a new study demonstrates that a significant percentage of women continue to rate sex as important throughout midlife. The study also identified those factors affecting which women continue to value sex most. Study results will be presented during the 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS), which opens on September 28.

A number of studies have previously shown that the importance of sex is highly correlated with sexual function among midlife women. Longitudinal studies have allowed researchers to examine how the importance of sex changes as women age, giving way to the premise that women lose interest in sex as they age.

This new study included more than 3,200 women who participated in the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation. Its researchers sought to evaluate how various factors affected a woman's interest in sex throughout the menopause transition. Factors included race, education, partner status, body mass index, blood pressure, menopause status, hormones, depression symptoms, perceived stress, antidepressant use, sexual orientation, sexual satisfaction, pelvic pain, vaginal dryness, and hot flashes.

Based on this analysis, researchers identified three distinct trajectories in importance of sex with aging. For almost half of the women (45%), sex was important early in midlife and became less so over time. For roughly a quarter of the women (27%), sex remained highly important to them throughout midlife, and for another quarter (28%), sex was of low importance during midlife.

From an ethnic perspective, black women were more likely to rate sex as important for the duration of midlife, whereas Chinese and Japanese women were more likely to rate sex as not important or to see drops in importance. Other variables included women with depression symptoms, who were more likely to have low importance or see drops in importance of sex. Better sexual satisfaction was associated with maintained high levels of importance of sex over time, as was higher education.

"In contrast to prior literature reporting that the importance of sex decreases as women move through midlife, we found that, for a quarter of women, sex remains highly important to them throughout midlife," says Dr. Holly Thomas from the University of Pittsburgh, lead author of the study abstract, "How important is sex to women during midlife?"

"Studies like these provide valuable insights to healthcare providers who may otherwise dismiss a woman's waning sexual desire as a natural part of aging," says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director. "Often there are other treatable reasons, such as vaginal dryness or depression, as to why a woman's interest in sex may have decreased."

Drs. Thomas and Faubion are available for interviews before and after the presentation at the virtual annual meeting.

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Crows Are Capable of Conscious Thought, Scientists Demonstrate For The First Time

MICHELLE STARR, 28 SEPTEMBER 2020
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-research-finds-crows-can-ponder-their-own-knowledge

(sandra standbridge/Moment/Getty Images)

New research into the minds of crows has revealed a jaw-dropping finding: the canny corvids aren't just clever - they also possess a form of consciousness, able to be consciously aware of the world around them in the present. In other words, they have subjective experiences.
This is called primary, or sensory, consciousness, and it had only previously been demonstrated in primates - which means we now may have to rethink our understanding of how consciousness arises, in addition to reconsidering the avian brain.

"The results of our study opens up a new way of looking at the evolution of awareness and its neurobiological constraints," said animal physiologist Andreas Nieder of the University of Tübingen.

Consciousness is difficult to pin down in animals that don't speak. It's the ability to be aware of oneself and the world around you, to know what you know, and to think about that knowledge. It enhances problem-solving and decision-making - at both of which crows excel.

Primary consciousness is the most basic form of consciousness as we categorise it - awareness of perceiving the world in the present (and the immediate past and future). Primarily, it's been associated with the primate cerebral cortex, a complex layered region of the mammalian brain.

But bird brains are structured quite differently from primate brains, and are smooth where mammalian brains are layered. So even though corvids - the bird family that includes crows and ravens - are incredibly smart, with cognitive abilities found in primates, questions remained over whether they could cross the line into conscious thought.

To find out, Nieder and his colleagues designed an experiment to test whether birds could have subjective experiences, and tested it on two carrion crows (Corvus corone).

First, the birds were trained to respond to visual stimuli. They were shown screens on which lights were displayed; if the crow saw the lights, they were to move their heads to show that yes, they had seen something. Most of the lights were clear and unambiguous, easy to see, and the crows reliably reported that they had seen them.

But some of the lights were a lot harder to spot - brief and faint. For these, the two crows sometimes reported seeing the signals, and sometimes did not. This is where the subjective sensory experience enters the picture.

For the experiment, each of the crows was shown roughly 20,000 signals, spread out across dozens of sessions. Meanwhile, electrodes implanted in their brains recorded their neuronal activity.

When the crows recorded a 'yes' response to seeing the visual stimuli, neuronal activity was recorded in the interval between seeing the light and delivering the answer. When the answer was 'no', that elevated neuronal activity was not seen. This connection was so reliable that it was possible to predict the crow's response based on the brain activity.

"Nerve cells that represent visual input without subjective components are expected to respond in the same way to a visual stimulus of constant intensity," Nieder said.

"Our results, however, conclusively show that nerve cells at higher processing levels of the crow's brain are influenced by subjective experience, or more precisely produce subjective experiences."

The results confirm that subjective experiences are not exclusive to the primate brain - and that the complex layering of the mammalian brain is not a requirement for consciousness. In fact, a second new study finds that the smoothness of bird brains is not indicative at all of a lack of complexity.

Using 3D polarised light imaging and neural circuit tracing techniques, biopsychologist Martin Stacho of Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany and colleagues characterised the anatomy of pigeon and owl brains. They found that the cerebral architecture in both birds is strikingly similar to the cerebral architecture of mammals.

It's possible that similar cognitive abilities evolved independently in both birds and mammals, a phenomenon known as convergent evolution. But it's also possible that our brains are more closely related than their differences can suggest.

"Our findings suggest that it is likely that an ancient microcircuit that already existed in the last common stem amniote might have been evolutionarily conserved and partly modified in birds and mammals," Stacho and his team write.

Nieder agrees with this possibility.

"The last common ancestors of humans and crows lived 320 million years ago," he said. "It is possible that the consciousness of perception arose back then and has been passed down ever since. In any case, the capability of conscious experience can be realised in differently structured brains and independently of the cerebral cortex."

This means primary consciousness could be far more common across birds and mammals than we've realised.

If this proves true, the next and possibly even more fascinating question is: do these animals also possess secondary consciousness? Are they aware that they are aware?

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RECORD-SMASHING SNOW BURIES THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS OF EUROPE

SEPTEMBER 27, 2020 CAP ALLON
https://electroverse.net/record-smashing-snow-buries-europe/

Cold records are falling ACROSS the European continent as the forecast polar blast delivers debilitating snow totals a full month before normal.

Heavy early-season powder is piling-up on the higher elevations of Europe — the worst hit nations include Switzerland, France, Austria, Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic.

Across the Alps, though particularly to the east, a full meter (3.3ft) of snow was suffered on Saturday, Sept 26–and it’s still coming down as of Sunday morning.

Added by CC for Sunday humour

The Swiss meteorological agency said Saturday that the town of Montana, located in the southern state of Valais, experienced a staggering 25 cm (10 inches) of snow — a new record for this time of year in books dating back almost 100 years.

In parts of Austria, powder was falling at altitudes of just 550 meters (1,805 feet) above sea level — again, a new record for the month of September.

 It isn’t usually until late October when the Alps witnesses its first big snowfalls of the season, but not this year — what was already a cold and snowy summer across the higher elevations of Europe has ended with a record-smashing wintry bang! Fall appears to have been skipped altogether: winter is here, and it’s here to stay.

Looking at the latest GFS runs (shown below), heavy snow will persist over the Alps through Sunday and Monday. And then, after a brief reprieve, the snowfall will return with a vengeance next weekend:

Also note the forecast accumulations across Scandinavian and the UK.

The first heavy snow of the season also fell in the Czech Republic, around the village of Kvilda in the Šumava mountain range.

As confirmed by the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, and reported by praguemorning.cz, snowfall was also observed at Bučina, Březník, Luzný and Klínovec in the Ore Mountains:

Rare September snow buries Czech mountains.

Even southern Germany received some exceptionally rare September snow:

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