#2,747 – Health Week: Hydrate!

By now we’ve all heard how important it is to stay hydrated.  Making sure to drink 8 glasses of water a day to keep up with our body’s insatiable thirst.  But now new evidence suggests that staying hydrated is really, really important.  As it has been linked to having lower disease risk, having a better quality of life, and living longer.

CNN explains:

“You may know that being adequately hydrated is important for day-to-day bodily functions such as regulating temperature and maintaining skin health.

But drinking enough water is also associated with a significantly lower risk of developing chronic diseases, a lower risk of dying early or lower risk of being biologically older than your chronological age, according to a National Institutes of Health study published Monday in the journal eBioMedicine.

‘The results suggest that proper hydration may slow down aging and prolong a disease-free life,’ said study author Natalia Dmitrieva, a researcher in the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a division of NIH, in a news release.

Learning what preventive measures can slow down the aging process is ‘a major challenge of preventive medicine,’ the authors said in the study. That’s because an epidemic of ‘age-dependent chronic diseases’ is emerging as the world’s population rapidly ages. And extending a healthy life span can help improve quality of life and decrease health care costs more than just treating diseases can.

The authors thought optimal hydration might slow down the aging process, based on previous similar research in mice. In those studies, lifelong water restriction increased the serum sodium of mice by 5 millimoles per liter and shortened their life span by six months, which equals about 15 years of human life, according to the new study. Serum sodium can be measured in the blood and increases when we drink less fluids.

Using health data collected over 30 years from 11,255 Black and White adults from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, or ARIC, the research team found adults with serum sodium levels at the higher end of the normal range — which is 135 to 146 milliequivalents per liter (mEq/L) — had worse health outcomes than those at the lower end of the range. Data collection began in 1987 when participants were in their 40s or 50s, and the average age of participants at the final assessment during the study period was 76.

Adults with levels above 142 mEq/L had a 10% to 15% higher chance of being biologically older than their chronological age compared with participants in the 137 to 142 mEq/L range. The participants with higher faster-aging risk also had a 64% higher risk for developing chronic diseases such as heart failure, stroke, atrial fibrillation, peripheral artery disease, chronic lung disease, diabetes and dementia.

And people with levels above 144 mEq/L had a 50% higher risk of being biologically older and a 21% higher risk of dying early. Adults with serum sodium levels between 138 and 140 mEq/L, on the other hand, had the lowest risk of developing chronic disease.”

So, just to recap if you don’t drink enough water throughout your life you may be unintentionally shortening your life by 15 years! That’s suicide by lifestyle! That’s crazy! From now on I’ll drinking water every five seconds!

Hydrate!

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#2,746 – Health Week: Ingestible Sensor

In addition to a diabetes managing implant we could soon have another object that resides inside of us that would constantly monitor our gut health.  Thanks to a newly developed ingestible sensor.

According to the Brighter Side News:

“Engineering researchers have developed a battery-free, pill-shaped ingestible biosensing system designed to provide continuous monitoring in the intestinal environment. It gives scientists the ability to monitor gut metabolites in real time, which wasn’t possible before. This feat of technological integration could unlock new understanding of intestinal metabolite composition, which significantly impacts human health overall.

The ingestible, biofuel-driven sensor facilitates in-situ access to the small intestine, making glucose monitoring easier while generating continuous results. These measurements provide a critical component of tracking overall gastrointestinal health, a major factor in studying nutrition, diagnosing and treating various diseases, preventing obesity, and more.”

Personally, I feel like this is a great idea.  There’s still so much we don’t know about the gut and our microbiomes and how what goes on inside us effects our brains, personalities, and overall health.  The more we can find out the better. Especially if we can also prevent obesity, treat disease, and live healthier lives.

Is an Ingestible Sensor the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,745 – Health Week: Diabetes Implant

Here’s a breakthrough that’s near and dear to my heart: a potential new way to treat type 1 diabetes that utilizes a drug releasing implant instead of regular injections.  A much more efficient solution that would lead to fewer complications. 

According to Cosmos:

“In an exciting breakthrough for diabetes patients, a team of US researchers has eliminated type 1 diabetes symptoms in rats with a coin-sized implant.

They’re hoping the research leads human trials within a few years.

Their 3D-printed device, which slowly releases therapeutics into the body, could one day be a safer and more convenient treatment for people with type 1 diabetes.

The device, called the Neovascularized Implantable Cell Homing and Encapsulation (NICHE), and the successful rat study is described in a Nature Communications paper.

Type 1 diabetes, the less common type of diabetes, is caused by the body’s immune system attacking and destroying cells in the pancreas, which make insulin.

Without enough insulin, blood sugar levels can’t be controlled, causing a variety of side effects.

There isn’t currently a cure for type 1 diabetes; it’s typically managed with daily insulin injections and careful monitoring of food intake.

In severe cases, people may need pancreas or liver transplants, or transplants of insulin-making islet cells.

Patients will then need to be on immunosuppression drugs for the rest of their lives so their bodies don’t reject the transplant. This puts them at risk from infectious diseases.

The NICHE counters this with localised immunosuppression drugs.

It sits under the skin, slowly releasing immunosuppressants which work on the surrounding area but not the rest of the body. It also has a reservoir for islet cells.

It makes use of resins, tiny pores, and nanofluidics to keep the islet cells healthy while storing and releasing immunosuppressants.

When tested on rats and a monkey, this 2.5 centimetre device suppressed diabetes symptoms, without causing rejection of the islet cells.

It currently needs to be refilled with immunosuppressant drugs every month, but the researchers, who are based at Houston Methodist Hospital in the US, believe they can improve it so that it only needs refilling every six months.”

Hopefully, that time frame gets extended out even further and this potential life saving product improves even more before finally reaching the market where it can save lives.

Is the NICHE Implant the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,744 – Jello Paper Towels

We could soon use Jello to clean up spills instead of paper towels.  Well, sort of. 

Inverse explains:

“Paper towels are one of the most fervently consumed household goods on the market, as evidenced by pandemic shortages. In 2020, people used over 13 billion pounds of them in the United States alone. This means we’re sacrificing lots of trees to clean up coffee spills.

But it can be tricky to slash paper towel waste — a viable alternative must be reusable and absorb more water than paper products. It should also be just as convenient.

Now, a team of engineers from the University of Maryland may have found a more sustainable picker-upper: Their new design for a flexible hydrogel sheet could become the kitchen towel of the future.

In a recent paper published in the journal Matter, the researchers describe the new material’s unique properties — including its powerful absorbing potential. Though their recent work is a proof-of-concept study, the team hopes that the hydrogel sheets could eventually hit store shelves.

You can compare hydrogel to jello, says Srinivasa Raghavan, a chemical engineer at the University of Maryland and co-author of the new research.

Hydrogels are a group of polymer materials that can soak up large amounts of liquid and retain them once wet. This property comes from hydrogels’ chemical composition: Their cross-linked individual units, known as monomers, can swell up like blobs of jello without losing their structure.

The term ‘hydrogel’ was coined all the way back in 1894. Yet it took some time for these materials to find a commercial niche. In the early 1960s, the biomedical field started employing them to keep contact lenses moist. Today, they’re most commonly put into diapers to sponge up, well, you know.

Raghavan noticed that typical hydrogels wouldn’t work very well to wipe up a spill. That’s because they mostly come in the form of brittle pellets or powders — not a thin, flexible sheet, like a towel.

For everyday purposes, though, ‘the form of a towel is really useful and convenient,’ Raghavan says. So he and his team, spearheaded by Ph.D. student Hema Choudhary, set out to concoct a hydrogel with the absorptive power of a diaper — along with the convenience of a roll of paper towels.”

Amazing.  Now if you’ll excuse me I suddenly have a craving for Jello.

A Jello like material could soon replace paper towels.

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#2,743 – Bionic Reading

Want to read more books this year? Setting aside just 30 minutes a day could help you knock out dozens of titles this year.  Or you could just use a new font specifically designed to help you read faster.

As Quartz puts it, “What if there was a fast and simple way for us to learn to how to read more efficiently?

That’s what Bionic Reading claims to do. The methodology, first developed in 2016, seeks to help distracted adults improve how they parse information by bolding a few letters within a block of text. This typographic trick purportedly shortens the time needed for our brains to process data.”

But it’s about retention too, not just speed.

According to Upworthy:

“But even those of us who are able to read fluently might sometimes struggle with the act of reading itself. Perhaps we don’t read as quickly as we wish we could or maybe our minds wander as our eyes move across the words. Sometimes we get to the end of a paragraph and realize we didn’t retain anything we just read.

People with focus or attention issues can struggle with reading, despite having no actual reading disabilities. It can be extremely frustrating to want to read something and have no issues with understanding the material, yet be unable to keep your mind engaged with the text long enough to get ‘into’ what you’re reading.

But what if there were a font that could help you stay focused? That could help you not only read faster but better retain what you’ve just read?

That’s what the creators of Bionic Reading claim is possible with their font tool.”

As an avid reader I’m all for anything that can help people read faster and more efficiently.  Just so long as they use it to read my blog!

Is Bionic Reading the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,742 – Roman Concrete

People have often wondered why Roman era concrete has lasted so much longer than modern versions.  In some cases for thousands of years.  What did they know when creating it that we don’t?! Well, now we may have finally figured it out.

Interesting Engineering explains:

“A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) about a 2,050-year-old Roman tomb has uncovered some interesting information about the nature of Roman-era concrete. Despite being a very ancient technology, the durability of this material has long stumped experts, until now. 

By studying the concrete of some of the existing Roman concrete structures, the team has discovered some interesting findings that may explain why Roman concrete lasts so long. The study was recently published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

In stark contrast, modern concrete tends to crack and crumble after only a few short decades through a process called spalling. But Roman concrete, invented before modern material science, seems to be able to last for centuries without the same problem. Oftentimes, many existing Roman concrete structures are in pretty good condition given their age — a feat that could not be replicated using modern concrete recipes.”

But why exactly is that?!  

Dezeen reports that, “The research team found the ancient Romans made their concrete with quicklime, which is lime in its pure state, rather than the more typical slaked lime, and that this gave it ‘self-healing’ properties.”

Thankfully, it seems as though we’ve finally gotten closer to solving this age old mystery.  Which does raise an interesting new question to ponder: how much other knowledge has been lost to history?! How much else do we still need to rediscover?!

The secret of roman concrete has finally been solved.

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#2,741 – The Netflix Fix

Netflix has been drawing a lot of heat lately for canceling shows too quickly. If the numbers aren’t there the very first weekend the shows are gone. I get that we live in a cancel culture but this is getting ridiculous! Case in point: the mind-boggling cancellation of the mind-bending 1899. Which especially doesn’t make sense considering it’s from the creators of Dark who have already delivered Netflix a mega hit. Fans have started an online petition to bring it back but it’s probably to no avail. Is this why Reed Hastings just stepped down? Has he come to the realization that Netflix is a sinking ship, about to face serious backlash for the way they do business?

The problem with canceling shows too quickly is that it makes people overly cautious. Why invest time and energy in a new show if it’s just going to get canceled after one season, ending on a cliffhanger with multiple subplots that never get resolved? Better to wait for a few seasons to come out and a satisfying conclusion to be put in place before jumping in. But if you do that, if you wait too long to start watching, if everyone does, then no show will ever get renewed. Creating a vicious cycle.

It’s gotten so bad that some showrunners are literally now begging people to watch their shows opening weekend as that is literally the only metric that Netflix cares about. But what if you don’t want to do that? What if you have a trip coming up and want to save a show for a long flight? Or for a rainy day? What if your just too busy to drop everything and watch something the day it comes out. Shouldn’t we be out and about, enjoying our lives, instead of just sitting around on the couch all the time anyway?

What I’m proposing is that Netflix change their ways. The so-called Netflix Fix would install a new metric by which Netflix can measure the success of a show, taking into account more than just opening weekend viewership. Such as:

• How many people have a show saved in their queue to watch later
• How many people said they liked the show within Netflix
• Rotten Tomato scores
• IMDB score
• Google user scores
• DVD/Blu Ray sales
• Merchandise sales
• Ticket sales (for movies previously released in theatres including all sequels and prequels)
• Award nominations
• Social media impressions (number of tweets, retweets, likes, comments, etc.)
• Results of polls the company conducts
• # of Google searches
• How many people started and watched to completion vs. started and stopped
• How many people watched more than once
• How many people went on to watch content similar to that

Combine all that and then contrast that versus how much it cost to make and how long it took and what critics are saying. Throw it all together into a mathematical formula similar to the Drake Equation and Voilà! you have a new formula for determine the actual value of a show!

Stop canceling shows!

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#2,740 – Ionocaloric Cooling

Refrigerators are constantly getting upgraded with new sensors, touch screens, and various other Internet of Things capabilities to anchor our smart homes. Running low on milk? Your refrigerator will know and order some more. Want to know what’s inside your fridge without opening your door? You can find out. But soon we may have a whole new method of refrigeration as well. One that’s much better for the environment.

Science Alert explains:

“Say hello to ionocaloric cooling: a new way to lower the mercury that has the potential to replace existing methods with something that is safer and friendlier to the planet.

Typical refrigeration systems transport heat away from a space via a gas that cools as it expands some distance away. As effective as this process is, some of the choice gases we use are also particularly unfriendly to the environment.

There is, however, more than one way a substance can be forced to absorb and shed heat energy.

A new method developed by researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, in the US takes advantage of the way that energy is stored or released when a material changes phase, as when solid ice turns to liquid water, for example.

Raise the temperature on a block of ice, it’ll melt. What we might not see so easily is that melting absorbs heat from its surroundings, effectively cooling it.

One way to force ice to melt without needing to turn up the heat is to add a few charged particles, or ions. Putting salt on roads to prevent ice forming is a common example of this in action. The ionocaloric cycle also uses salt to change a fluid’s phase and cool its surroundings.

‘The landscape of refrigerants is an unsolved problem,’ says mechanical engineer Drew Lilley, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. ‘No one has successfully developed an alternative solution that makes stuff cold, works efficiently, is safe, and doesn’t hurt the environment.’

‘We think the ionocaloric cycle has the potential to meet all those goals if realized appropriately.’

The researchers modeled the theory of the ionocaloric cycle to show how it could potentially compete with, or even improve upon, the efficiency of refrigerants in use today. A current running through the system would move the ions in it, shifting the material’s melting point to change temperature.

The team also ran experiments using a salt made with iodine and sodium, to melt ethylene carbonate. This common organic solvent is also used in lithium-ion batteries, and is produced using carbon dioxide as an input. That could make the system not just GWP [global warming potential] zero, but GWP negative.

A temperature shift of 25 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) was measured through the application of less than a single volt of charge in the experiment, a result that exceeds what other caloric technologies have managed to achieve so far.

‘There are three things we’re trying to balance: the GWP of the refrigerant, energy efficiency, and the cost of the equipment itself,” says mechanical engineer Ravi Prasher, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

‘From the first try, our data looks very promising on all three of these aspects.'”

Hopefully, this new cooling method continues to progress and we wind up with new products featuring this new cooling method before long.

Is Ionocaloric Cooling the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,739 – Gas

“Instagram makes people depressed & Twitter makes people angry.  Which is better?”

Elon Musk posed that question the other day to his million of followers. 

The answer may be Gas.  A new app, popular with teens, based around handing out compliments that Discord just acquired.

Jckonline explains:

“Named so for the act of ‘gassing someone up,’ the anonymous social media platform is intended to allow users to compliment their classmates by voting for their friends in a round of polls that refreshes every hour.

Now, if you’re thinking ‘there’s no way cyberbullying doesn’t interfere with this,’ you might be onto something—apps that are anonymous have a history of doing so. But Gas is all about positivity and positions itself as the place where friends share what they love about one another, ‘and no, they won’t dunk on you like other anonymous apps,’ the app’s description says.

‘The Hottest App Right Now? One Where Teens Have to Say Nice Things About Each Other’ is the title of a recent Wall Street Journal article, and it highlights an important need among this younger generation: Whether Gas ends up a fiery force or peters out, it’s currently ranking No. 1 in social networking and has a 4.5-star rating among 121,000 users, so it illustrates the craving for positivity in social media.”

Considering how big of an issue cyberbullying has become among teens, and how toxic social media has become in general, its no surprise that users are seeking out alternatives.  Safe spaces where they can still connect with one another and satiate their primal need for social interactions, while still feeding their notification fueled dopamine addictions.  If only we could somehow gas up all of Twitter.

Is Gas the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,738 – LOL Verifier

It’s a harmless white lie.  Saying that you laughed out loud when you really didn’t.  Something that we all do countless times throughout the day when we’re texting friends, talking to co-workers via email, or flirting on dating apps. Is it really something that we need to crack down on? Ensure that we only say it when we actually laugh out loud? One man thinks so. And that man is Brian Moore.  

Nerdist sums it up best:

“In this dark time when anyone can purchase a verification checkmark on Twitter, one man is pushing back on internet inauthenticity. Brian Moore built a box that, when plugged into a computer, will verify whether someone actually laughed out loud before letting them post ‘LOL.’ It’s a small but mighty step in the fight to say what you mean and mean what you say. But it is also silly. If you don’t actually LOL, the program swaps in a different message. Instead of hyperbole, it inserts a more honest message like ‘that’s funny’ or ‘ha.’ If you have actually chortled audibly, it add a satisfying green check mark and a timestamp following the ‘LOL.’”

Now if only there was a way to verify fake news.

Is LOL Verifier the Greatest Idea Ever?

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