Wednesday, 4 January 2023

EARTH’S AVERAGE TEMPERATURE DROPPED *AGAIN* IN DECEMBER, NOW DOWN 0.66C FROM 2016 PEAK

JANUARY 4, 2023 CAP ALLON


The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature reading for December 2022 has come in at 0.05 deg. C vs the multidecadal average.

Despite the ever-loudening cries of ‘catastrophic Earthly hotty-hot’ and the increasingly-draconian policy decisions that accompany them, this is the third sharp global temperature drop in as many months; drops that continue the overall downward trend observed since 2016’s peak (now down approx. 0.66C deg. C from then).

In simpler terms, it’s get harder and harder for the establishment’s anti-human narrative to be maintained.

A continuation of Earth’s cooling trend is highly probable over the coming months –with the odd bump along the way: climate is cyclic, after all– as low solar activity, La Nina, and the aftereffects of Hunga Tonga’s record-setting mesospheric eruption continue to have an infinitely-larger influence over our climate than a natural byproduct of human existence (see how that works).

According to the 15x NASA/NOAA AMSU satellites that measure every square inch of the lower troposphere (where life resides), planet Earth cooled drastically during the fourth quarter of 2022: from 0.32C above the multidecadal baseline in October, to 0.17C in November, to now just 0.05C in December.

Again, to simplify this for your average spoon-fed alarmist, Earth was warmer back in the late-1980s:

The various regional departures from the 30-year average are tabled below (scroll down to Dec 2022 in bold):


Note that four of the six individual regions held cooler than the average last month: the Southern Hemisphere (-0.03C), the Tropics (-0.35C), the USA (-0.21C) and Australia (-0.38C).

Note also that the Arctic saw a reading of 0.80C above the average in Dec 2022, which, paradoxically, is actually expected during prolonged spells of low solar activity. As visualized below in NASA’s ‘Maunder Minimum Reconstruction Map’, areas such as the Arctic, Alaska and the North Atlantic actually warm during bouts of otherwise ‘global’ cooling:

Temp change between 1780 (a year of normal solar activity) and 1680 (a year within the depths of the Maunder Minimum) — NASA.

Discard establishment statements and data-collations for they are agenda-driven and, unlike the UAH, are subject to obvious tampering, discrepancies and obfuscations — such as the ignored Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.


Recommend this post and follow
The Life of Earth
https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/2023/
By at No comments:

Tuesday, 3 January 2023

Beavers will become a bigger boon to river water quality as US West warms

NOVEMBER 8, 2022, by Stanford University

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

As climate change worsens water quality and threatens ecosystems, the famous dams of beavers may help lessen the damage.

That is the conclusion of a new study by Stanford University scientists and colleagues, publishing Nov. 8 in Nature Communications. The research reveals that when it comes to water quality in mountain watersheds, beaver dams can have a far greater influence than climate-driven, seasonal extremes in precipitation. The wooden barriers raise water levels upstream, diverting water into surrounding soils and secondary waterways, collectively called a riparian zone. These zones act like filters, straining out excess nutrients and contaminants before water re-enters the main channel downstream.

This beneficial influence of the big, bucktoothed, amphibious rodents looks set to grow in the years ahead. Although hotter, arid conditions wrought by climate change will lessen water quality, these same conditions have also contributed to a resurgence of the American beaver in the western United States, and consequently an explosion of dam building.

"As we're getting drier and warmer in the mountain watersheds in the American West, that should lead to water quality degradation," said the study's senior author Scott Fendorf, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University. "Yet unbeknownst to us prior to this study, the outsized influence of beaver activity on water quality is a positive counter to climate change."

A lucky natural experiment

The discovery of the profound impact of beaver dams came about serendipitously. As a Ph.D. student in Fendorf's lab in 2017, lead study author Christian Dewey had started doing field work along the East River, a main tributary of the Colorado River near Crested Butte in central Colorado.

Initially, Dewey had set out to track seasonal changes in hydrology, and riparian zone impacts on nutrients and contaminants in a mountainous watershed.

"Completely by luck, a beaver decided to build a dam at our study site," said Dewey, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University (whose mascot, incidentally, is a beaver). "The construction of this beaver dam afforded us the opportunity to run a great natural experiment."

Dams versus dry years and wet years

For the study, Dewey and colleagues reviewed data on water levels gathered hourly by sensors installed in the river and throughout the riparian area. The team also collected water samples, including from below the ground's surface, to monitor nutrient and contaminant levels.

To understand how beaver dams may affect water quality in a future where global warming produces more frequent droughts and extreme swings in rainfall, the researchers compared water quality along a stretch of the East River during a historically dry year, 2018, to water quality the following year, when water levels were unusually high. They also compared these yearlong datasets to water quality during the nearly three-month period, starting in late July 2018, when the beaver dam blocked the river.

Water quality is a measure of the suitability of water for a particular purpose—ecosystem health or human consumption, for instance. During periods of drought, as less water flows through rivers and streams, the concentrations of contaminants and excess nutrients, such as nitrogen, rise. Major downpours and seasonal snowmelt are then needed to flush out contaminants and restore water quality.

Through their measurements and computer modeling of the interlinked biological, chemical, and physical processes that affect how contaminants become concentrated or flow downstream, the researchers found that the beaver dam dramatically increased removal of nitrate, a form of nitrogen, by creating a surprisingly steep drop between the water levels above and below the dam.

Warm, dry summers following spring snowmelt also produce big level changes, which generate a pressure gradient that pushes water into surrounding soils. The larger the gradient, the greater the flow of water and nitrate into soils, where microbes transform nitrate into an innocuous gas.

In the East River, the researchers found the increase in the gradient compared to an average day was at least 10 times greater with the dam than it was during the summer peak without the dam, for both the high-water year (2019) and the drought year (2018). Stated otherwise, the effects of the dam exceeded climatic hydrological extremes—in either direction of drought or abundant snowmelt—by an order of magnitude.

"Beavers are countering water quality degradation and improving water quality by producing simulated hydrological extremes that dwarf what the climate is doing," said Fendorf, who is the Terry Huffington Professor in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

While in place, the beaver dam boosted removal of unwanted nitrogen from the studied East River section by 44% over the seasonal extremes. Nitrogen is an especially pernicious problem for water quality as it promotes overgrowth of algae, which when decomposed starve water of the oxygen needed to support diverse animal life and a healthy ecosystem.

The study is a reminder that as the future impacts of climate change are holistically assessed, feedback from changes in ecosystems must also be included.

"We would expect climate change to induce hydrological extremes and degradation of water quality during drought periods," said Fendorf, "and in this study, we're seeing that would have indeed been true if it weren't for this other ecological change taking place, which is the beavers, their proliferating dams, and their growing populations."


Recommend this post and follow
The Life of Earth
By at No comments:

Researchers Find Super Simple Key to Healthy Aging: Good Hydration!



A study published in eBioMedicine by the National Institutes of Health found that adults who maintain proper hydration tend to be in better health, have a lower risk of developing chronic conditions like heart and lung disease, and live longer compared to those who do not consume enough fluids.

NIH findings may provide early clues about increased risks for advanced biological aging and premature death.

Adults who stay well-hydrated appear to be healthier, develop fewer chronic conditions, such as heart and lung disease, and live longer than those who may not get sufficient fluids, according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study published on January 2, 2023, in the journal eBioMedicine.

Using health data gathered from 11,255 adults over a 30-year period, researchers analyzed links between serum sodium levels – which go up when fluid intake goes down – and various indicators of health. They found that adults with serum sodium levels at the higher end of a normal range were more likely to develop chronic conditions and show signs of advanced biological aging than those with serum sodium levels in the medium ranges. Adults with higher levels were also more likely to die at a younger age.

“The results suggest that proper hydration may slow down aging and prolong a disease-free life,” said Natalia Dmitrieva, Ph.D., a study author and researcher in the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of NIH.

The study expands on research the scientists published in March 2022, which found links between higher ranges of normal serum sodium levels and increased risks for heart failure. Both findings came from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, which includes sub-studies involving thousands of Black and white adults from throughout the United States. The first ARIC sub-study started in 1987 and has helped researchers better understand risk factors for heart disease, while shaping clinical guidelines for its treatment and prevention.

For this latest analysis, researchers assessed information study participants shared during five medical visits – the first two when they were in their 50s, and the last when they were between ages 70-90. To allow for a fair comparison between how hydration correlated with health outcomes, researchers excluded adults who had high levels of serum sodium at baseline check-ins or with underlying conditions, like obesity, that could affect serum sodium levels.

They then evaluated how serum sodium levels correlated with biological aging, which was assessed through 15 health markers. This included factors, such as systolic blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar, which provided insight into how well each person’s cardiovascular, respiratory, metabolic, renal, and immune system was functioning. They also adjusted for factors, like age, race, biological sex, smoking status, and hypertension.

They found that adults with higher levels of normal serum sodium – with normal ranges falling between 135-146 milliequivalents per liter (mEq/L) – were more likely to show signs of faster biological aging. This was based on indicators like metabolic and cardiovascular health, lung function, and inflammation. For example, adults with serum sodium levels above 142 mEq/L had a 10-15% associated increased odds of being biologically older than their chronological age compared to ranges between 137-142 mEq/L, while levels above 144 mEq/L correlated with a 50% increase. Likewise, levels of 144.5-146 mEq/L were associated with a 21% increased risk of premature death compared to ranges between 137-142 mEq/L.

Similarly, adults with serum sodium levels above 142 mEq/L had up to a 64% increased associated risk for developing chronic diseases like heart failure, stroke, atrial fibrillation, and peripheral artery disease, as well as chronic lung disease, diabetes, and dementia. Conversely, adults with serum sodium levels between 138-140 mEq/L had the lowest risk of developing chronic disease.

The findings don’t prove a causal effect, the researchers noted. Randomized, controlled trials are necessary to determine if optimal hydration can promote healthy aging, prevent disease, and lead to a longer life. However, the associations can still inform clinical practice and guide personal health behavior.

“People whose serum sodium is 142 mEq/L or higher would benefit from evaluation of their fluid intake,” Dmitrieva said. She noted that most people can safely increase their fluid intake to meet recommended levels, which can be done with water as well as other fluids, like juices, or vegetables and fruits with a high water content. The National Academies of Medicine, for example, suggest that most women consume around 6-9 cups (1.5-2.2 liters) of fluids daily and for men, 8-12 cups (2-3 liters).

Others may need medical guidance due to underlying health conditions. “The goal is to ensure patients are taking in enough fluids, while assessing factors, like medications, that may lead to fluid loss,” said Manfred Boehm, M.D., a study author and director of the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine. “Doctors may also need to defer to a patient’s current treatment plan, such as limiting fluid intake for heart failure.”

The authors also cited research that finds about half of people worldwide don’t meet recommendations for daily total water intake, which often starts at 6 cups (1.5 liters).

“On the global level, this can have a big impact,” Dmitrieva said. “Decreased body water content is the most common factor that increases serum sodium, which is why the results suggest that staying well hydrated may slow down the aging process and prevent or delay chronic disease.”


Recommend this post and follow
The birth of modern Man
By at No comments:

Cut Marks on Ancient Bones Reveal What Was in Fashion 320,000 Years Ago

HUMANS: 03 January 2023, By MICHELLE STARR

The cave bear metatarsal with cut marks suggestive of skinning. 
(Volker Minkus)

Ancient bones retrieved from an archaeological site in Germany suggest that archaic humans were peeling bears for their skins at least 320,000 years ago.

The markings found on phalanx and metatarsal paw bones of a cave bear (Ursus spelaeus or U. deningeri) represent some of the earliest known evidence of this type, and demonstrate one of the measures our ancient relatives used to survive the harsh winter conditions in the area at the time.

"The exploitation of bears, especially cave bears, has been an ongoing debate for over a century and is relevant not only in the context of hominin diets but also for the use of skins," write a team of researchers led by archaeozoologist Ivo Verheijen of the University of Tübingen in Germany.

"Tracing the origins of hide exploitation can contribute to the understanding of survival strategies in the cold and harsh conditions of Northwestern Europe during the Middle Pleistocene."

The region surrounding the German town of Schöningen has been of interest to archaeologists for decades. In the 1990s, researchers uncovered a trove of ancient artifacts from a nearby open-cut mine, including the oldest complete wooden weapons ever discovered, a set of spears dated to between 300,000 and 337,000 years ago.

Other items included stone tools, bone tools, and a number of animal bones, including those of cave bears. And many of those bones had cut marks on them – a sign that ancient humans had been butchering the animals, their tools gouging the bones as they went.


Fine cut marks on the metatarsal of a cave bear.
 (Volker Minkus)



But the cut marks on the two paw bones were curious. Not only were they small and precise, the fact that they were there at all was cause for investigation.

"Cut marks on bones are often interpreted in archaeology as an indication of the utilization of meat," Verheijen explains. "But there is hardly any meat to be recovered from hand and foot bones. In this case, we can attribute such fine and precise cut marks to the careful stripping of the skin."

They compared their bones to other examples of cut marks on bear paw bones analyzed in the scientific literature, and ultimately ascribed to skinning. The cut marks on the bones found at Schöningen were similar enough for Verheijen and his team to conclude ancient humans (either Homo heidelbergensis or Neanderthals) were skinning bears when the site was in use.

This is likely to have provided the people with better protection than their own relatively hairless hides. Bears have a thick coat at the warmest of times; in winter, it is supplemented by the growth of a soft undercoat that provides further insulation against the cold. Although the world was in an interglacial period at the time – that is, between ice ages, so relatively warm – winters would still have been harsh.

"These newly discovered cut marks are an indication that about 300,000 years ago, people in northern Europe were able to survive in winter thanks in part to warm bear skins," Verheijen says.


An artist's impression of two Homo heidelbergensis individuals wearing bear skins. 
(Benoît Clarys)




This naturally raises the question of how the skins were obtained. In order to be usable, a bear's skin needs to be stripped pretty quickly after death, so sitting around just waiting for a cave bear to drop dead is unlikely to be a useful strategy. Luckily, the bones and weapons found at the site suggest an answer.

"If only adult animals are found at an archaeological site, this is usually considered an indication of hunting," Verheijen says. "At Schöningen, all the bear bones and teeth belonged to adult individuals."

So, taken together, the bear remains at Schöningen suggest that humans were hunting bears, then skinning them for their luxurious pelts. How exactly they used these pelts remains open to speculation, but it's unlikely such groups of human would have been walking around naked, the researchers say; therefore, the likelihood is that they skins were used for either wearing, or sleeping.

The research has been published in the Journal of Human Evolution.


Recommend this post and follow
The birth of modern Man
By at No comments:

Monday, 2 January 2023

Mindfulness Can Rival Antidepressants For Anxiety, Study Finds

02 January 2023, By DAVID NIELD

(Westend61/Getty Images)

Mindfulness exercises can, in some cases, be as effective as antidepressant drugs when dealing with anxiety disorders, new research reveals.

The findings highlight how mindfulness meditation could be a useful approach to treating these conditions.

The study put a course of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) techniques up against a course of escitalopram – a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class medication also known as Lexapro, considered to be a gold standard antidepressant – across eight weeks.

Follow-up surveys were carried out up to 24 weeks after enrollment using an assessment called the Clinical Global Impression of Severity scale (CGI-S), measured on a scale of 1 to 7 (with 7 being severe anxiety).

Those who had tried mindfulness saw their scores drop by an average of 1.35 points, while those on escitalopram saw their scores drop by an average of 1.43 points. In terms of statistical significance, both interventions are on the same level.

"Our study provides evidence for clinicians, insurers, and health care systems to recommend, include and provide reimbursement for mindfulness-based stress reduction as an effective treatment for anxiety disorders," says psychiatrist Elizabeth Hoge from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Two-hundred-and-eight patients completed the course of treatment prescribed by the researchers. The mindfulness program involved two-and-a-half-hour in-person classes once a week, with a day-long retreat during the fifth or sixth week. Additionally, there were 45 minutes of daily at-home exercises.

Antidepressants can be helpful in treating anxiety, but they don't work for everyone; even SSRIs like escitalopram fall just below the standards used to evaluate adherence to medications, with significant numbers of patients failing to renew prescriptions. They can also be difficult to obtain and can come with side effects such as nausea.

"A big advantage of mindfulness meditation is that it doesn't require a clinical degree to train someone to become a mindfulness facilitator," says Hoge. "Additionally, sessions can be done outside of a medical setting, such as at a school or community center."

More than 300 million people are thought to be living with some form of anxiety disorder, making it the most common type of mental disorder at the moment. The term includes conditions like agoraphobia and can lead to an increased risk of suicide and disability.

And while mindfulness programs have previously been shown to help with anxiety, they haven't been directly compared with an antidepressant drug until now. These results are a strong indication that MBSR techniques can reduce anxiety by a similar level, as well as give individuals tools they can continue to benefit from in the future.

However, the researchers emphasize that mindfulness does require more commitment and time than taking medication. It's also not clear how effective app-based meditation exercises might be, without the in-person element.

"It is important to note that although mindfulness meditation works, not everyone is willing to invest the time and effort to successfully complete all of the necessary sessions and do regular home practice, which enhances the effect," says Hoge.

"Also, virtual delivery via videoconference is likely to be effective, so long as the live components are retained, such as question-and-answer periods and group discussion."

The research has been published in JAMA Psychiatry.


Recommend this post and follow
The birth of modern Man
By at No comments:

More Important Than You Think: How Breathing Shapes the Brain and Impacts Mental Health

By AARHUS UNIVERSITY JANUARY 1, 2023


A new computational model has been developed that explains the connection between our breathing and how it influences the brain’s expectations.

Breathing is essential for survival, but taking in a breath of fresh air does more than just keep us alive.

“Breathe in… Breathe out…”

It’s common knowledge that taking deep breaths can help calm us down in stressful situations. But now, Professor Micah Allen from the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University has made significant strides in understanding the relationship between breathing and the brain.

By synthesizing results from numerous studies on the brain imaging of rodents, monkeys, and humans, Allen and his team developed a computational model that explains how our breathing patterns can shape the expectations of the brain.

“What we found is that, across many different types of tasks and animals, brain rhythms are closely tied to the rhythm of our breath. We are more sensitive to the outside world when we are breathing in, whereas the brain tunes out more when we breathe out. This also aligns with how some extreme sports use breathing, for example, professional marksmen are trained to pull the trigger at the end of exhalation,” explains Professor Micah Allen.

The study suggests that breathing is more than just something we do to stay alive, explains Micah Allen.

“It suggests that the brain and breathing are closely intertwined in a way that goes far beyond survival, to actually impact our emotions, our attention, and how we process the outside world. Our model suggests there is a common mechanism in the brain which links the rhythm of breathing to these events.”

Breathing can affect our mental health

Understanding how breathing shapes our brain, and by extension, our mood, thoughts, and behaviors, is an important goal in order to better prevent and treat mental illness.

“Difficulty breathing is associated with a very large increase in the risk for mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. We know that respiration, respiratory illness, and psychiatric disorders are closely linked. Our study raises the possibility that the next treatments for these disorders might be found in the development of new ways to realign the rhythms of the brain and body, rather than treating either in isolation,” explains Micah Allen.

Stabilizing our mind through breathing is a well-known and used tactic in many traditions such as yoga and meditation. The new study sheds light on how the brain makes it possible. It suggests that there are three pathways in the brain that control this interaction between breathing and brain activity. It also suggests that our pattern of breathing makes the brain more “excitable”, meaning neurons are more likely to fire during certain times of breathing

New research to come

The new study gives researchers a new target for future studies in for example persons with respiratory or mood disorders, and Micah Allen and his group have already started new projects based on the study.

“We have a variety of ongoing projects that are both building on and testing various parts of the model we have proposed. Ph.D. Student Malthe Brændholt is conducting innovative brain imaging studies in humans, to try and understand how different kinds of emotional and visual perception are influenced by breathing in the brain,” says Micah Allen.

The team is also collaborating with the Pulmonology team at Aarhus University Hospital, where tools developed in the lab are used to understand whether a person suffering from long-covid may have disruptions in the breath-brain alignment. And there are more projects coming, says Micah Allen.

”We will be using a combination of human and animal neuroimaging to better understand how breathing influences the brain, and also utilizing exploring how different drugs influence respiratory-brain interaction. We would also like to someday study how lifestyle factors like stress, sleep, and even things like winter swimming influence breath-brain interaction. We are very excited to continue this research,” says Micah Allen.


Recommend this post and follow
The birth of modern Man
By at No comments:

Archaeology News: Spanish Egyptologists unearth 60 mummies at Luxor site

 

Spanish Egyptologists unearth 60 mummies at Luxor site


 By Shady Roshdy, Laprensa latina News, December 29, 2022

https://www.laprensalatina.com/spanish-egyptologists-unearth-60-mummies-at-luxor-site/



Luxor, Egypt, Dec 29 (EFE).- A group of Egyptologists from Spain have discovered two tombs that housed almost 60 mummies at site in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor.

“The most important thing this year is the discovery of two tombs, almost six meters deep,” made up of “two chambers each and housing around 60 mummies and remains of mummies,” Francisco J. Martin, the president of the Vizier Amenhotep Huy Project, told Efe.

Martín, who leads a team of 22 Spanish Egyptologists and eight Egyptian experts, said the tombs were dated after Vizier Amenhotep-Huy’s tomb (18th dynasty).

The site is a rich example of the architectural style and “evidence that the vizier’s tomb at some point became a necropolis,” the expert added.

The two secondary tombs are connected via two burial chambers and are characterized by a lack of epigraphs that were found in Vizier Amenhotep Huy’s tomb, which is a chapel that contains 30 columns with epigraphs, according to Martín.

“They began to build other tombs from different dynasties within the vizier’s tomb, since the place was sacred,” Martín continued from the mission’s headquarters in the southern city of Luxor. “It is a very rich site and we are discovering many things.”


Spanish Egyptologists unearth 60 mummies at Luxor site



Amenhotep Huy was vizier to pharaoh Amenhotep III during the last third of his reign.

He was originally from northern Egypt and was considered the “opposition leader” amid new religious trends promoted by Akhenaten, the Pharaoh’s son and heir.

“He is a very important person,” Martín added.

Teresa Bedman, co-director of the project, told Efe that, so far, all mummies buried in the area “were senior officials of the clergy of Amun of Thebes.”

Because the bodies were mummified, experts can be sure they belonged to “higher social classes,” according to Bedman.

Once the vizier died and was martyred, his burial site became a prestigious one where many others wanted to be buried: “a necropolis inside the vizier’s tomb,” Bedman added.

The Spanish mission has launched an exhibition of the contents of the vizier’s necropolis with the Luxor museum which will continue into 2023.EFE




THIS PAGE WAS POSTED BY SPUTNIK ONE OF THE SPUTNIKS ORBIT BLOG
PLEASE RECOMMEND THIS PAGE AND FOLLOW US AT
By at No comments:

Sunday, 1 January 2023

Some guts are better than others at harvesting energy, study shows

DECEMBER 27, 2022, by University of Copenhagen

Enterotypes differ in stool energy density, intestinal transit time, microbial alpha-diversity, and body weight. 
a The study included baseline measurements of 85 overweight subjects. Prior to collection of the stool and urine samples used in the study, habitual dietary intake was estimated based on 4-day dietary registrations and intestinal transit time was estimated using radio-opaque markers from day 1 to 6 where participants maintained their habitual diet and lifestyle. The collected stool sample was used to estimate dry stool energy density as a measure of gut microbial energy extraction, bacterial cell counts, the gut microbiome community structure, and short-chain fatty acids. Microbial-derived metabolites were measured in the urine samples. 
b Principal coordinate analysis plot using Bray-Curtis distance of bacterial relative abundance on the genus level as distance metric. Symbols are samples, with shape/color indicating assigned enterotype (red circles: Bacteroides (B-type), n = 35; yellow diamonds: Prevotella (P-type), n = 16; green squares: Ruminococcaceae (R-type), n = 34). Relative abundance of the taxa used for enterotype assignment (black arrows) and values for dry energy, Shannon index and transit time (purple arrows) were plotted supplementary (i.e. projected after ordination). Horizontal and vertical axis explain 20% and 12% of variation, respectively. Subjects stratified into three enterotypes differed in c stool energy density (n = 77), d intestinal transit time (n = 85), microbiome alpha-diversity as reflected by e Shannon Index and f observed richness (n = 85), as well (g) body weight (n = 85). Differences between enterotypes were detected using the Mann-Whitney U test. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001. 
Credit: Microbiome (2022). DOI: 10.1186/s40168-022-01418-5

New research from the University of Copenhagen suggests that a portion of the Danish population has a composition of gut microbes that, on average, extracts more energy from food than do the microbes in the guts of their fellow Danes. The research is a step towards understanding why some people gain more weight than others, even when they eat the same.

Unfair as it, some of us seem to put on weight just by looking at a plate of Christmas cookies, while others can munch away with abandon and not gain a gram. Part of the explanation could be related to the composition of our gut microbes. This is according to new research conducted at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports.

The research is published in the journal Microbiome.

Researchers studied the residual energy in the feces of 85 Danes to estimate how effective their gut microbes are at extracting energy from food. At the same time, they mapped the composition of gut microbes for each participant.

The results show that roughly 40% of the participants belong to a group that, on average, extracts more energy from food compared to the other 60%. The researchers also observed that those who extracted the most energy from food also weighed 10% more on average, amounting to an extra nine kilograms.

"We may have found a key to understanding why some people gain more weight than others, even when they don't eat more or any differently. But this needs to be investigated further," says Associate Professor Henrik Roager of the University of Copenhagen's Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports.

May increase the risk of obesity

The results indicate that being overweight might not just be related to how healthily one eats or the amount of exercise one gets. It may also have something to do with the composition of a person's gut microbes.

Participants were divided into three groups, based on the composition of their gut microbes. The so-called B-type composition (dominated by Bacteroides bacteria) is more effective at extracting nutrients from food and was observed in 40% of the participants.

Following the study, the researchers suspect that a portion of the population may be disadvantaged by having gut bacteria that are a bit too effective at extracting energy. This effectiveness may result in more calories being available for the human host from the same amount of food.

"The fact that our gut bacteria are great at extracting energy from food is basically a good thing, as the bacteria's metabolism of food provides extra energy in the form of, for example, short-chain fatty acids , which are molecules that our body can use as energy-supplying fuel. But if we consume more than we burn, the extra energy provided by the intestinal bacteria may increase the risk of obesity over time," says Henrik Roager.

Short travel time in the gut surprises

From mouth to esophagus, stomach, duodenum and small intestine, large intestine and finally to rectum, the food we eat takes a 12-to-36-hour journey, passing several stations along the way, before the body has extracted all the food's nutrients.

The researchers also studied the length of this journey for each participant, all of whom had similar dietary patterns. Here, the researchers hypothesized that those with long digestive travel times would be the ones who harvested the most nutrition from their food. But the study found the exact opposite.

"We thought that there would be a long digestive travel time would allow more energy to be extracted. But here, we see that participants with the B-type gut bacteria that extract the most energy, also have the fastest passage through the gastrointestinal system, which has given us something to think about," says Henrik Roager.

Confirms previous study in mice

The new study in humans confirms earlier studies in mice. In these studies, it was found that germ-free mice that received gut microbes from obese donors gained more weight compared to mice that received gut microbes from lean donors, despite being fed the same diet.

Even then, the researchers proposed that the differences in weight gain could be attributable to the fact that the gut bacteria from obese people were more efficient at extracting energy from food. This is the theory now being confirmed in the new study by the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports.

"It is very interesting that the group of people who have less energy left in their stool also weigh more on average. However, this study doesn't provide proof that the two factors are directly related. We hope to explore this more in the future," says Henrik Roager.

About gut bacteria:Everyone has a unique composition of gut bacteria—shaped by genetics, environment, lifestyle and diet.
The collection of gut bacteria, called the gut microbiota, is like an entire galaxy in our gut, with a staggering 100 billion of them per gram of stool.
Gut bacteria in the colon serve to break down food parts that our body's digestive enzymes can't, e.g., dietary fiber.
Humans can be divided into three groups based on the presence and abundance of three main groups of bacteria that most of us have: B-type (Bacteroides), R-type (Ruminococcaceae) and P-type (Prevotella).

About the study:The energy content of stool specimens from 85 overweight Danish women and men was examined.
Participants included men and women from 22 to 66 years old.
40% of participants fell into a special group, characterized by having a lower diversity of gut bacteria and faster travel time for food through their digestive tracts.
This group was also found to have less residual energy in their stool compared to the other two groups, which could not be explained by differences in habitual diet.
The researchers also observed that the group with less energy in their stool also weighed more than the other groups.


Recommend this post and follow
The Life of Earth
By at No comments:

HOMEHEALTH NEWS Trouble Falling Asleep at Night? Daytime Light Exposure May Be Key

By UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DECEMBER 30, 2022


Research indicates that getting insufficient light during the day leads to problems at night, when it’s time for bed.

A study measuring the sleep patterns of students at the University of Washington has turned up some surprises about how and when our bodies tell us to sleep — and illustrates the importance of getting outside during the day, even when it’s cloudy.

Published online on December 7 in the Journal of Pineal Research, the study found that UW students fell asleep later in the evening and woke up later in the morning during — of all seasons — winter, when daylight hours on the UW’s Seattle campus are limited and the skies are notoriously overcast.

The team behind this study believes it has an explanation: The data showed that in winter students received less light exposure during the day. Other research has indicated that getting insufficient light during the day leads to problems at night, when it’s time for bed.

“Our bodies have a natural circadian clock that tells us when to go to sleep at night,” said senior author Horacio de la Iglesia, a UW professor of biology. “If you do not get enough exposure to light during the day when the sun is out, that ‘delays’ your clock and pushes back the onset of sleep at night.”

An overcast December day on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. 
Credit: University of Washington

The study used wrist monitors to measure sleep patterns and light exposure for 507 UW undergraduate students from 2015 to 2018. Data indicated that students were getting roughly the same amount of sleep each night regardless of season. But, on school days during the winter, students were going to bed on average 35 minutes later and waking up 27 minutes later than summer school days. This finding surprised the team, since Seattle — a high-latitude city — receives nearly 16 hours of sunlight on the summer solstice, with plenty evening light for social life, and just over eight hours of sunlight on the winter solstice.

“We were expecting that in the summer students would be up later due to all the light that’s available during that season,” said de la Iglesia.

Based on student sleep data, the researchers hypothesized that something in winter was “pushing back” the students’ circadian cycles. For most humans, including college students, the innate circadian cycle governing when we’re awake and asleep runs at about 24 hours and 20 minutes — and is “calibrated” daily by input from our environment. For UW students in the study, sleep data indicated that their circadian cycles were running up to 40 minutes later in winter compared to summer.

The team focused on light as a potential explanation for this winter delay. But light has different impacts on circadian rhythms at different times of the day.

“Light during the day — especially in the morning — advances your clock, so you get tired earlier in the evening, but light exposure late in the day or early night will delay your clock, pushing back the time that you will feel tired,” said de la Iglesia. “Ultimately, the time that you fall asleep is a result of the push and pull between these opposite effects of light exposure at different times of the day.”

Data showed that daytime light exposure had a greater impact than evening light exposure in the UW study. Each hour of daytime light “moved up” the students’ circadian phases by 30 minutes. Even outdoor light exposure on cloudy or overcast winter days in Seattle had this effect, since that light is still significantly brighter than artificial indoor lighting, said de la Iglesia. Each hour of evening light — light from indoor sources like lamps and computer screens — delayed circadian phases by an average of 15 minutes.

“It’s that push-and-pull effect,” said de la Iglesia. “And what we found here is that since students weren’t getting enough daytime light exposure in the winter, their circadian clocks were delayed compared to summer.”

The study offers lessons not just for college students.

“Many of us live in cities and towns with lots of artificial light and lifestyles that keep us indoors during the day,” said de la Iglesia. “What this study shows is that we need to get out — even for a little while and especially in the morning — to get that natural light exposure. In the evening, minimize screen time and artificial lighting to help us fall asleep.”

Lead author on the paper is Gideon Dunster, an associate manager with the Allen Institute for Cell Science, who conducted the study as a UW doctoral student. Co-authors are UW undergraduate alum Isabelle Hua, now a researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; Alex Grahe in the UW Department of Biology; Jason Fleischer and Satchidananda Panda of the Salk Institute; Kenneth Wright and Céline Vetter of the University of Colorado, Boulder; and UW teaching professor of biology Jennifer Doherty. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation. Dunster was supported by the Riddiford-Truman Fellowship and the Hoag Endowed Graduate Fellowship through the UW Department of Biology.


Recommend this post and follow
By at No comments:

Scientists Uncover a Gut-Brain Connection for Social Development

By UNIVERSITY OF OREGON DECEMBER 31, 2022

Illustration portrays the microbial makeup of human beings. According to recent studies on zebrafish, gut microbes play a role in the process of pruning excess connections in brain circuits that regulate social behavior. This pruning is crucial for the development of normal social behavior. 
Credit: National Human Genome Research Institute


To learn to socialize, zebrafish need to trust their gut.

Gut microbes encourage specialized cells to prune back extra connections in brain circuits that control social behavior, new University of Oregon research in zebrafish shows. The pruning is essential for the development of normal social behavior.

The researchers also found that these ‘social’ neurons are similar in zebrafish and mice. That suggests the findings might translate between species — and could possibly point the way to treatments for a range of neurodevelopmental conditions.

“This is a big step forward,” said University of Oregon neuroscientist Judith Eisen, who co-led the work with neuroscientist Philip Washbourne. “It also sheds light on things that are going on in larger, furrier animals.”

The team reports their findings in two new papers, published in PLOS Biology and BMC Genomics.

While social behavior is a complex phenomenon involving many parts of the brain, Washbourne’s lab previously identified a set of neurons in the zebrafish brain that are required for one particular kind of social interaction. Normally, if two zebrafish see each other through a glass partition, they’ll approach each other and swim side by side. But zebrafish without these neurons don’t show interest.

Here, the team found a pathway linking microbes in the gut to these neurons in the brain. In healthy fish, gut microbes spurred cells called microglia to prune back extra links between neurons.

Pruning is a normal part of healthy brain development. Like clutter on a counter, extra neural connections can get in the way of the ones that really matter, resulting in muddled messages.

In zebrafish without those gut microbes, the pruning didn’t happen, and the fish showed social deficits.

“We’ve known for a while that the microbiome influences a lot of things during development,” Washbourne said. “But there hasn’t been a lot of concrete data about how the microbiome is influencing the brain. We’ve done quite a bit to push the boundary there.”

In a second paper, the team identified two defining features of this set of social neurons that may be shared by mice and zebrafish. One is that these cells could be identified by having similar genes turned on—a clue that they might serve similar roles in the brains of both species. Such signature signs could be used to identify neurons that serve this role in different brains. The other is that “neurons with the same gene signature in mice are in approximately the same brain locations as the zebrafish social neurons,” Eisen said.

That finding strengthens the researchers’ belief that their work in zebrafish could translate to mice or humans. It’s easier to study the nuts and bolts of brain development in zebrafish, where scientists can watch neural circuits form through the young fish’s transparent bodies. Researchers could then take the insights from zebrafish and use them as a starting place for understanding other species.

Both gut microbiome disruption and poor neural synapse pruning have been linked to a range of neuropsychiatric conditions like autism spectrum disorder.

“If we can tie these together, it might facilitate better therapeutics for a wide range of disorders,” said Joseph Bruckner, a postdoc in the Eisen and Washbourne labs and the first author on the PLOS Biology paper. His next step is figuring out what molecules are linking the bacteria to the microglia, mapping the pathway between microbes and behavior in even more detail.

References:
“The microbiota promotes social behavior by modulating microglial remodeling of forebrain neurons” by Joseph J. Bruckner, Sarah J. Stednitz, Max Z. Grice, Dana Zaidan, Michelle S. Massaquoi, Johannes Larsch, Alexandra Tallafuss, Karen Guillemin, Philip Washbourne and Judith S. Eisen, 1 November 2022, PLOS Biology.


Recommed this post and follow
The birth of modern Man
By at No comments:

Archaeology News: Monkeys made stone tools 50,000 years ago that were discovered in Brazil - study

 

Monkeys made stone tools 50,000 years ago that were discovered in Brazil - study


The researchers also state that they're "confident that the early archeological sites from Brazil may not be human-derived but may belong to capuchin monkeys."


By JERUSALEM POST STAFF, JANUARY 1, 2023
https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-726324



Stone tools that are estimated to be roughly 50,000 years old were found in Pedra Furada in northeastern Brazil, and that these tools were made by monkeys who lived in that time, according to a study that was first published in November.

The tools found at the sites are characterized "by the use of immediately available raw material," the study says. 



The researchers also state that they're "confident that the early archeological sites from Brazil may not be human-derived but may belong to capuchin monkeys." The peer-reviewed study was published in the journal The Holocene. 

"We're confident that the early archeological sites from Brazil may not be human-derived but may belong to capuchin monkeys."

Researchers of the study



Capucin monkeys are usually found in the tropical forests in Central and South America, according to Heritage Daily. They are considered to be the smartest New World monkey.

Details of the Pedra Furada

The Pedra Furada contains hundreds of archaeological sites that date back thousands of years.



Researchers in the study had compared stone tools from the Pedra Furada to modern capuchin-made stone tool deposits, to which they discovered that the tools from Pedra Furada are consistent with the capuchin-made stone tools. 




Monkeys have used stone tools for hundreds of years


New archaeological evidence suggests that Brazilian capuchins have been using stone tools to crack open cashew nuts for at least 700 years. Researchers say, to date, they have found the earliest archaeological examples of monkey tool use outside of Africa. In their paper, published in Current Biology, they suggest it raises questions about the origins and spread of tool use in New World monkeys and, controversially perhaps, prompts us to look at whether early human behaviour was influenced by their observations of monkeys using stones as tools. The research was led by Dr Michael Haslam of the University of Oxford, who in previous papers presents archaeological evidence showing that wild macaques in coastal Thailand used stone tools for decades at least to open shellfish and nuts.

Scientists Have Announced That A Group Of Monkeys Have Entered The Stone Age


1990s PG Tips Chimps The New Neighbours Advert



THIS PAGE WAS POSTED BY SPUTNIK ONE OF THE SPUTNIKS ORBIT BLOG
PLEASE RECOMMEND THIS PAGE AND FOLLOW US AT
By at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)