Lifeboat Foundation

Grass may transfer genes from their neighbors in the same way genetically modified crops are made, a new study has revealed.

Research, led by the University of Sheffield, is the first to show the frequency at which grasses incorporate DNA from other species into their genomes through a process known as lateral gene transfer.

The stolen genetic secrets give them an evolutionary advantage by allowing them to grow faster, bigger or stronger and adapt to new environments quicker.

My idea is that all the waste from human waste has vital things in it we could even someday have everything recycled back into its original form like if waste medicines or other nutrients could be extracted we could essentially recycle human waste having a near unlimited supply of chemicals which would be great for space traveling where nothing is wasted.

Poop’s got an image problem

And there’s also the issue of acceptance. Research suggests there are both cultural and psychological barriers standing in the way of wider bodily waste recycling.

Continue reading “Recycling our poop to grow food more sustainably” »

Tests on cabbage plants suggest fertilisers derived from human urine and faeces are safe and could help bring down food prices.

By Brian Owens

A study from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago demonstrated that Botulinum toxin (Botox) injected in the pylorus during endoscopy improves chronic nausea and vomiting in children who have a disorder of gut-brain interaction (DGBI). These debilitating symptoms not attributed to a defined illness have previously been called functional gastrointestinal disorders before the newer DGBI classification. The study’s findings point to a novel understanding of the condition’s pathology – pylorus that is failing to relax and allow food to effectively pass into the small intestine resulting in symptoms of nausea, vomiting, early satiety and bloating.

Results were published in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition.

“Our results suggest that chronic nausea and vomiting might be caused by pyloric dysfunction, rather than abnormal peristalsis, which is the rhythmic contraction and relaxation of digestive tract muscles needed to move foods and liquids through the gastrointestinal system,” said lead author Peter Osgood, MD, gastroenterologist at Lurie Children’s and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “This is a paradigm shift in our understanding of mechanistic pathology. Importantly, it opens the door to a more targeted use of Botox specifically in children who are found to have pyloric dysfunction during endoscopy, and for whom the current medications are not effective.”

Beyond fish? 3D-printed vegan salmon hits the markets in Europe thanks to foodtech startup Revo Foods.

Cancer relies on metabolism pathways to grow, which has Rogel Cancer Center researchers looking at how to use food and diet to exploit cancer’s vulnerabilities as a foundation of new potential therapies.

Learn more about the cancer research being done at University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center: https://www.rogelcancercenter.org/research/programs.

Continue reading “Cancer, Metabolism, and Food: A New Way to Look at Potential Therapies” »

When Karl Wenner looks at his farm on Upper Klamath Lake in the mountains of southern Oregon, he sees a landscape in transition.

He and his partners converted part of their fields of barley into wetlands along the shore of the lake to filter runoff and protect the quality of the water that eventually flows back into the Klamath River, which empties into the Pacific on California’s coast. The project is part of a larger effort to clean up the river, remove dams and bring back salmon.

At Lakeside Farms, that transformation is being guided by a surprising source of information: the pollen collected by tens of thousands of honeybees. A Belgian start-up called BeeOdiversity enlisted Wenner, who is also a beekeeper, to help in a survey in the Klamath River Basin. Each colony, with 50,000 bees, harvests pollen over an area of more than two square miles, collecting as many as 4 billion tiny samples in a year. The resulting data creates a clear, accurate picture of the plant life and pollution present in the environment.

Can artificial intelligence (AI) get hungry? Develop a taste for certain foods? Not yet, but a team of Penn State researchers is developing a novel electronic tongue that mimics how taste influences what we eat based on both needs and wants, providing a possible blueprint for AI that processes information more like a human being.

Human behavior is complex, a nebulous compromise and interaction between our physiological needs and psychological urges. While artificial intelligence has made great strides in recent years, AI systems do not incorporate the psychological side of our human intelligence. For example, emotional intelligence is rarely considered as part of AI.

“The main focus of our work was how could we bring the emotional part of intelligence to AI,” said Saptarshi Das, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State and corresponding author of the study published recently in Nature Communications.

In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers have discovered a new species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it. The replica is so precise, it even mirrors the termites’ distinct body segments and has three pairs of pseudoappendages that resemble antennae and legs.

Rove beetles (family Staphylinidae) are already infamous in the animal kingdom as masters of disguise. Some, for example, have evolved to look like army ants, allowing the beetles to march alongside them and feed on their eggs and young.

The new beetle species (Austrospirachtha carrijoi)—found beneath the soil in Australia’s Northern Territory—emulates a termite by enlarging its abdomen, a phenomenon known as physogastry. Evolution has reshaped this body part into a highly realistic replica of a termite (as seen above), head and all, which rides on top of the rest of the beetle’s body. The beetle’s real, much smaller head peeks out from beneath its termite disguise, the authors report this month in the journal.