With the ability to use tools, solve complex puzzles, and even play tricks on humans just for funsies, octopuses are fiercely smart. But their intelligence is quite weirdly built, since the eight-armed cephalopods have evolved differently from pretty much every other type of organism on Earth.
Rather than a centralised nervous system such as vertebrates have, two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are spread throughout its body, distributed between its arms. And now scientists have determined that those neurons can make decisions without input from the brain.
Cancer cells use a bizarre strategy to reproduce in a tumor’s low-energy environment; they mutilate their own mitochondria! Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) also know how this occurs, offering a promising new target for pancreatic cancer therapies.
Why would a cancer cell want to destroy its own functioning mitochondria? “It may seem pretty counterintuitive,” admits M.D.-Ph. D. student Brinda Alagesan, a member of Dr. David Tuveson’s lab at CSHL.
It’s the fungus mushrooms are made of, but it can also produce everything from plastics to plant-based meat to a scaffolding for growing organs—and much more.
Female bedbugs who are ‘full bellied’ and therefore more attractive mates for males, are able to boost their immune systems in anticipation of catching sexually transmitted infections, research has found.
Led by the University of Sheffield, the research discovered a correlation between fed females and the chances of them being inseminated and therefore infected as a result.
To mitigate this, female bedbugs that have just dined on blood and are therefore full, are able to cleverly manage their simple immune system in anticipation of mating. This is in comparison to female bedbugs that do not get regular food, do not mate regularly and therefore do not have the same need to boost their immune system in defence of infection.
Nothing can threaten a velvety green lawn like vagabond dandelions—but it isn’t all bad, says a University of Alberta gardening expert.
In fact, people may want to actually welcome the fluffy yellow blooms into their yards, said Ken Willis, head of horticulture at the U of A Botanic Garden.
“There’s starting to be a lot more argument that they should be kept because of what they can do for pollinators. Ecologically they are becoming very important as a food source for domestic and wild species of bees, particularly in early spring because they grow so soon. Butterflies and moths also feed on them as a source of sugar, and some species of birds feed on dandelion seeds,” said Willis, who leaves room for the hardy plant in natural areas in the botanic garden.
Fish are an important part of the ecosystem and the human diet. Unfortunately, overfishing has depleted many fish stocks, and the proposed solution — fish farming — is creating far more problems than it solves. Not only are fish farms polluting the aquatic environment and spreading disease to wild fish, farmed fish are also an inferior food source, in part by providing fewer healthy nutrients; and in part by containing more toxins, which readily accumulate in fat.
Farmed Salmon = Most Toxic Food in the World
Salmon is perhaps the most prominent example of how fish farming has led us astray. Food testing reveals farmed salmon is one of the most toxic foods in the world, having more in common with junk food than health food. Studies highlighting the seriousness of the problem include:
Do you know how to maintain a family-sized garden without unlimited soil, natural sunlight and Earth’s gravity? If the answer is yes, then call NASA.
The Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami in partnership with NASA is calling all “makers” to participate in its “Growing Beyond Earth Maker Contest.” The challenge is to reinvent the systems used to grow edible plants on the International Space Station and beyond.
Fairchild and NASA began their partnership in 2015 to find more ways to sustain plant life in space. Last summer, the botanical garden received a nearly $750,000 grant from NASA to support its Growing Beyond Earth Innovation Studio, a community work space dedicated to the technology of growing food.
An all-star panel of experts in nutritional studies with an emphasis on longevity. At some point in your life, you have heard the following. “Eat the right food. It will help you live longer.” What if I told you the right food could help you heal as well. This panel of longevity driven nutritionist will give you a broad range of fact-based regiments and compelling individual opinions on Nutrition and longevity. This segment will cover many diverse understandable methods that can make a change in longevity for you or your loved ones. Fill yourself with the knowledge of proper nutrition for longevity.
Speakers Will Include: Brian Clement – Plant-Based & founder of “Hippocrates Health Institute” A typical American growing up in the New Jersey/New York area, Brian likes to joke that he was a pioneer in the field of obesity—he was fat even before many Americans were fat! Raised in an Irish household on the standard American diet of meat, processed foods, and sugary sodas, he was unfit and gasping for air every few steps. When he was 20 years old, he was dating a girl whose best friend’s boyfriend was 30—and a vegetarian. Despite the fact he had been more or less educated by his family that the body would die without animal-based foods, the lure of an influential peer inspired him to give up meat in one fell swoop. For the first year and a half, he kept his vegetarian diet a secret from his family. Yet after losing 120 pounds and experiencing the difference in his health, he came out of the proverbial closet (much to his family’s dismay!) and became a complete vegan three years later.
There is so little food in the mud at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that individual microbes living there use just 0.00000000001 joules of energy each year.
