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Your gut microbiome will thank you later
A healthy gut seems like the new catch-all to better overall health these days. Nutrition and diet culture has us drinking kombucha and ginger tea and coffee, but what if we told you that going to happy hour might also help?
In a recent double-blind study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 19 men were divided into two groups and asked to drink 11 ounces of alcoholic lager (5.2% by volume) or nonalcoholic lager with dinner for 4 weeks.
Beer? Yes. Beer.
We humans have trillions of microorganisms running rampant through our digestive tracts. When they’re happy, we have a lower chance of developing heart disease and diabetes. You know what else has millions of happy microorganisms from fermentation? Beer. It also has polyphenols that can help the body’s tissues fight cancers, as well as heart disease and inflammation. So beer is looking a little more healthy now, isn’t it?
In the study, the researchers found that both the alcoholic- and nonalcoholic-lager groups had a boost in bacterial diversity in the gut and higher fecal alkaline phosphatase levels, which showed improved intestinal health. They acknowledged, however, that the nonalcoholic route would be safer and healthier for overall health.
So add a lager to the list of gut-healthy foods that you should be consuming. It may give the phrase “beer gut” a whole new meaning.
We’ve lost our minds, but at least we know how fast they’re going
The phrase “quantum consciousness” sounds like something out of a particularly cheesy episode of Star Trek: “Oh no, Captain, the quantum consciousness has invaded our computer, and the only way to drive it out is to reverse the polarity of a focused tachyon beam.”
When it comes to understanding such basic existential issues as the origin of consciousness, however, quantum mechanics wasn’t off the table. The theory of the quantum origin of consciousness dates back to the 1990s (thanks in part to noted physician Roger Penrose), and goes something like this: There are microtubules within neurons in the brain that are small enough and isolated enough from the warm, wet, and chaotic brain environment where quantum effects can briefly come into play. We’re talking miniscule fractions of a second here, but still, long enough for quantum calculations to take place in the form of system wavefunction collapse, courtesy of gravity.
To plunge even deeper into the rabbit hole of quantum mechanics, the reason Schrödinger’s cat doesn’t occur in real life is wavefunction collapse; the more massive a quantum system is, the more likely it is to collapse into one state or another (alive or dead, in the cat’s case). The quantum origin of consciousness, or Orch OR theory, holds that human consciousness arises from electrical oscillations within the neuronal microtubules caused by the computations stemming from the collapse of small quantum systems.
That is an awful lot of overly simplified explanation, especially considering the study that just came out essentially disproved it. Oops. The research, published in Physics of Life Reviews, is pretty simple. The researchers went to a lab deep underground to avoid interference from cosmic rays, and sat around for months, observing a chunk of germanium for signs of spontaneous radiation, attributable to the same sort of wavefunction collapse that is supposedly occurring in our brains. They found nothing out of the ordinary, pretty definitively disproving most of Orch OR theory.
The researchers were unwilling to completely dismiss the idea (this is quantum mechanics, after all, uncertainty kind of goes with the territory), but it does seem like we’ll have to search elsewhere for sources of human consciousness. Personally, we’re big fans of the cymbal-playing monkey.
Missing links: A real fish story
Dear LOTME:
Ear’s a question that’s been keeping me up at night. Is the human middle ear the result of top-secret government experiments involving alien technology, Abraham Lincoln, and the Illuminati?
Restless in Roswell
Dear Restless:
The paleoanthropologic community has been sorting through this mystery for decades, and fossils discovered in China over the past 20 years finally provide a much less conspiratorially satisfying answer.
For some time now, experts in the field have believed that the bones of the human middle ear evolved from the spiracular gill of a fish. The spiracle is a small hole behind each eye that opens to the mouth in some fishes and was used to breathe air in the earliest, most primitive species. But how did we get from spiracle to ear?
The missing links come in the form of the cranial anatomy of Shuyu, a 438-million-year-old, fingernail-sized skull of a jawless fish, and the 419-million-year-old fossil of a completely preserved fish with gill filaments in the first branchial chamber.
“These fossils provided the first anatomical and fossil evidence for a vertebrate spiracle originating from fish gills,” senior author Gai Zhikun, PhD, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Beijing, said in a written statement.
In many ways, it seems, we are fish: “Many important structures of human beings can be traced back to our fish ancestors, such as our teeth, jaws, middle ears, etc,” added Zhu Min, PhD, also of the institute.
So, Restless, the next time you hear the soothing sounds of an angry mob storming the Capitol or you chew on a slab, slice, or chunk of mutant, laboratory-produced chicken in your favorite fast-food restaurant, be sure to thank Shuyu.
Can you lend me an ear?
If you thought locusts were only a nuisance, think again. They have their uses. If you take a locust’s ear and put it inside a robot, the robot will be able to hear and receive signals. Who knew?
Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel showed the robot’s hearing abilities by giving clap signals that told the robot what to do: One clap means go forward, two claps mean move back. What do you think the robot would do if it heard the clap break from Cha Cha Slide?
“Our task was to replace the robot’s electronic microphone with a dead insect’s ear, use the ear’s ability to detect the electrical signals from the environment, in this case vibrations in the air, and, using a special chip, convert the insect input to that of the robot,” Ben M. Maoz, PhD, said in a statement from the university.
And how does a dead locust ear work in a robot? Well, Dr. Maoz explained: “My laboratory has developed a special device – Ear-on-a-Chip – that allows the ear to be kept alive throughout the experiment by supplying oxygen and food to the organ while allowing the electrical signals to be taken out of the locust’s ear and amplified and transmitted to the robot.”
The research won’t stop at hearing, he said, as the other four senses also will be taken into consideration. This could help us sense dangers in the future, such as earthquakes or diseases. We said it before and we’ll say it again: We’re rooting for you, science!
Your gut microbiome will thank you later
A healthy gut seems like the new catch-all to better overall health these days. Nutrition and diet culture has us drinking kombucha and ginger tea and coffee, but what if we told you that going to happy hour might also help?
In a recent double-blind study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 19 men were divided into two groups and asked to drink 11 ounces of alcoholic lager (5.2% by volume) or nonalcoholic lager with dinner for 4 weeks.
Beer? Yes. Beer.
We humans have trillions of microorganisms running rampant through our digestive tracts. When they’re happy, we have a lower chance of developing heart disease and diabetes. You know what else has millions of happy microorganisms from fermentation? Beer. It also has polyphenols that can help the body’s tissues fight cancers, as well as heart disease and inflammation. So beer is looking a little more healthy now, isn’t it?
In the study, the researchers found that both the alcoholic- and nonalcoholic-lager groups had a boost in bacterial diversity in the gut and higher fecal alkaline phosphatase levels, which showed improved intestinal health. They acknowledged, however, that the nonalcoholic route would be safer and healthier for overall health.
So add a lager to the list of gut-healthy foods that you should be consuming. It may give the phrase “beer gut” a whole new meaning.
We’ve lost our minds, but at least we know how fast they’re going
The phrase “quantum consciousness” sounds like something out of a particularly cheesy episode of Star Trek: “Oh no, Captain, the quantum consciousness has invaded our computer, and the only way to drive it out is to reverse the polarity of a focused tachyon beam.”
When it comes to understanding such basic existential issues as the origin of consciousness, however, quantum mechanics wasn’t off the table. The theory of the quantum origin of consciousness dates back to the 1990s (thanks in part to noted physician Roger Penrose), and goes something like this: There are microtubules within neurons in the brain that are small enough and isolated enough from the warm, wet, and chaotic brain environment where quantum effects can briefly come into play. We’re talking miniscule fractions of a second here, but still, long enough for quantum calculations to take place in the form of system wavefunction collapse, courtesy of gravity.
To plunge even deeper into the rabbit hole of quantum mechanics, the reason Schrödinger’s cat doesn’t occur in real life is wavefunction collapse; the more massive a quantum system is, the more likely it is to collapse into one state or another (alive or dead, in the cat’s case). The quantum origin of consciousness, or Orch OR theory, holds that human consciousness arises from electrical oscillations within the neuronal microtubules caused by the computations stemming from the collapse of small quantum systems.
That is an awful lot of overly simplified explanation, especially considering the study that just came out essentially disproved it. Oops. The research, published in Physics of Life Reviews, is pretty simple. The researchers went to a lab deep underground to avoid interference from cosmic rays, and sat around for months, observing a chunk of germanium for signs of spontaneous radiation, attributable to the same sort of wavefunction collapse that is supposedly occurring in our brains. They found nothing out of the ordinary, pretty definitively disproving most of Orch OR theory.
The researchers were unwilling to completely dismiss the idea (this is quantum mechanics, after all, uncertainty kind of goes with the territory), but it does seem like we’ll have to search elsewhere for sources of human consciousness. Personally, we’re big fans of the cymbal-playing monkey.
Missing links: A real fish story
Dear LOTME:
Ear’s a question that’s been keeping me up at night. Is the human middle ear the result of top-secret government experiments involving alien technology, Abraham Lincoln, and the Illuminati?
Restless in Roswell
Dear Restless:
The paleoanthropologic community has been sorting through this mystery for decades, and fossils discovered in China over the past 20 years finally provide a much less conspiratorially satisfying answer.
For some time now, experts in the field have believed that the bones of the human middle ear evolved from the spiracular gill of a fish. The spiracle is a small hole behind each eye that opens to the mouth in some fishes and was used to breathe air in the earliest, most primitive species. But how did we get from spiracle to ear?
The missing links come in the form of the cranial anatomy of Shuyu, a 438-million-year-old, fingernail-sized skull of a jawless fish, and the 419-million-year-old fossil of a completely preserved fish with gill filaments in the first branchial chamber.
“These fossils provided the first anatomical and fossil evidence for a vertebrate spiracle originating from fish gills,” senior author Gai Zhikun, PhD, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Beijing, said in a written statement.
In many ways, it seems, we are fish: “Many important structures of human beings can be traced back to our fish ancestors, such as our teeth, jaws, middle ears, etc,” added Zhu Min, PhD, also of the institute.
So, Restless, the next time you hear the soothing sounds of an angry mob storming the Capitol or you chew on a slab, slice, or chunk of mutant, laboratory-produced chicken in your favorite fast-food restaurant, be sure to thank Shuyu.
Can you lend me an ear?
If you thought locusts were only a nuisance, think again. They have their uses. If you take a locust’s ear and put it inside a robot, the robot will be able to hear and receive signals. Who knew?
Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel showed the robot’s hearing abilities by giving clap signals that told the robot what to do: One clap means go forward, two claps mean move back. What do you think the robot would do if it heard the clap break from Cha Cha Slide?
“Our task was to replace the robot’s electronic microphone with a dead insect’s ear, use the ear’s ability to detect the electrical signals from the environment, in this case vibrations in the air, and, using a special chip, convert the insect input to that of the robot,” Ben M. Maoz, PhD, said in a statement from the university.
And how does a dead locust ear work in a robot? Well, Dr. Maoz explained: “My laboratory has developed a special device – Ear-on-a-Chip – that allows the ear to be kept alive throughout the experiment by supplying oxygen and food to the organ while allowing the electrical signals to be taken out of the locust’s ear and amplified and transmitted to the robot.”
The research won’t stop at hearing, he said, as the other four senses also will be taken into consideration. This could help us sense dangers in the future, such as earthquakes or diseases. We said it before and we’ll say it again: We’re rooting for you, science!
Your gut microbiome will thank you later
A healthy gut seems like the new catch-all to better overall health these days. Nutrition and diet culture has us drinking kombucha and ginger tea and coffee, but what if we told you that going to happy hour might also help?
In a recent double-blind study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 19 men were divided into two groups and asked to drink 11 ounces of alcoholic lager (5.2% by volume) or nonalcoholic lager with dinner for 4 weeks.
Beer? Yes. Beer.
We humans have trillions of microorganisms running rampant through our digestive tracts. When they’re happy, we have a lower chance of developing heart disease and diabetes. You know what else has millions of happy microorganisms from fermentation? Beer. It also has polyphenols that can help the body’s tissues fight cancers, as well as heart disease and inflammation. So beer is looking a little more healthy now, isn’t it?
In the study, the researchers found that both the alcoholic- and nonalcoholic-lager groups had a boost in bacterial diversity in the gut and higher fecal alkaline phosphatase levels, which showed improved intestinal health. They acknowledged, however, that the nonalcoholic route would be safer and healthier for overall health.
So add a lager to the list of gut-healthy foods that you should be consuming. It may give the phrase “beer gut” a whole new meaning.
We’ve lost our minds, but at least we know how fast they’re going
The phrase “quantum consciousness” sounds like something out of a particularly cheesy episode of Star Trek: “Oh no, Captain, the quantum consciousness has invaded our computer, and the only way to drive it out is to reverse the polarity of a focused tachyon beam.”
When it comes to understanding such basic existential issues as the origin of consciousness, however, quantum mechanics wasn’t off the table. The theory of the quantum origin of consciousness dates back to the 1990s (thanks in part to noted physician Roger Penrose), and goes something like this: There are microtubules within neurons in the brain that are small enough and isolated enough from the warm, wet, and chaotic brain environment where quantum effects can briefly come into play. We’re talking miniscule fractions of a second here, but still, long enough for quantum calculations to take place in the form of system wavefunction collapse, courtesy of gravity.
To plunge even deeper into the rabbit hole of quantum mechanics, the reason Schrödinger’s cat doesn’t occur in real life is wavefunction collapse; the more massive a quantum system is, the more likely it is to collapse into one state or another (alive or dead, in the cat’s case). The quantum origin of consciousness, or Orch OR theory, holds that human consciousness arises from electrical oscillations within the neuronal microtubules caused by the computations stemming from the collapse of small quantum systems.
That is an awful lot of overly simplified explanation, especially considering the study that just came out essentially disproved it. Oops. The research, published in Physics of Life Reviews, is pretty simple. The researchers went to a lab deep underground to avoid interference from cosmic rays, and sat around for months, observing a chunk of germanium for signs of spontaneous radiation, attributable to the same sort of wavefunction collapse that is supposedly occurring in our brains. They found nothing out of the ordinary, pretty definitively disproving most of Orch OR theory.
The researchers were unwilling to completely dismiss the idea (this is quantum mechanics, after all, uncertainty kind of goes with the territory), but it does seem like we’ll have to search elsewhere for sources of human consciousness. Personally, we’re big fans of the cymbal-playing monkey.
Missing links: A real fish story
Dear LOTME:
Ear’s a question that’s been keeping me up at night. Is the human middle ear the result of top-secret government experiments involving alien technology, Abraham Lincoln, and the Illuminati?
Restless in Roswell
Dear Restless:
The paleoanthropologic community has been sorting through this mystery for decades, and fossils discovered in China over the past 20 years finally provide a much less conspiratorially satisfying answer.
For some time now, experts in the field have believed that the bones of the human middle ear evolved from the spiracular gill of a fish. The spiracle is a small hole behind each eye that opens to the mouth in some fishes and was used to breathe air in the earliest, most primitive species. But how did we get from spiracle to ear?
The missing links come in the form of the cranial anatomy of Shuyu, a 438-million-year-old, fingernail-sized skull of a jawless fish, and the 419-million-year-old fossil of a completely preserved fish with gill filaments in the first branchial chamber.
“These fossils provided the first anatomical and fossil evidence for a vertebrate spiracle originating from fish gills,” senior author Gai Zhikun, PhD, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Beijing, said in a written statement.
In many ways, it seems, we are fish: “Many important structures of human beings can be traced back to our fish ancestors, such as our teeth, jaws, middle ears, etc,” added Zhu Min, PhD, also of the institute.
So, Restless, the next time you hear the soothing sounds of an angry mob storming the Capitol or you chew on a slab, slice, or chunk of mutant, laboratory-produced chicken in your favorite fast-food restaurant, be sure to thank Shuyu.
Can you lend me an ear?
If you thought locusts were only a nuisance, think again. They have their uses. If you take a locust’s ear and put it inside a robot, the robot will be able to hear and receive signals. Who knew?
Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel showed the robot’s hearing abilities by giving clap signals that told the robot what to do: One clap means go forward, two claps mean move back. What do you think the robot would do if it heard the clap break from Cha Cha Slide?
“Our task was to replace the robot’s electronic microphone with a dead insect’s ear, use the ear’s ability to detect the electrical signals from the environment, in this case vibrations in the air, and, using a special chip, convert the insect input to that of the robot,” Ben M. Maoz, PhD, said in a statement from the university.
And how does a dead locust ear work in a robot? Well, Dr. Maoz explained: “My laboratory has developed a special device – Ear-on-a-Chip – that allows the ear to be kept alive throughout the experiment by supplying oxygen and food to the organ while allowing the electrical signals to be taken out of the locust’s ear and amplified and transmitted to the robot.”
The research won’t stop at hearing, he said, as the other four senses also will be taken into consideration. This could help us sense dangers in the future, such as earthquakes or diseases. We said it before and we’ll say it again: We’re rooting for you, science!