A Mind-Bending Truth.
A sophisticated theft.
“Succinct and smart…News Items boils it down like no other newsletter.” — Tom Freston, Firefly3 LLC and author of “Unplugged - Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu”.
1. Susan Dominus, The New York Times Sunday Magazine:
Why are babies born young? The most natural phenomenon on earth is actually hard to explain — at least on a cellular level. Consider this problem: The components of conception are old. When a woman gets pregnant, she has been carrying her egg cells since birth. The sperm that joins with the egg to form a zygote might have been just a few months in the making, but it inherits markers of age from the man who produced it. It only follows that the zygote would also show signs of age — and at first it does.
But then a mysterious metamorphosis begins: The cells of the zygote begin to reverse that damage, shaking off the metaphorical dust that the parents accumulated on their DNA. After two weeks, the cells of the embryo are back to a kind of ground zero of youth. Only then are they as young as they will ever be. To understand this process, which was discovered only recently and is known as “natural rejuvenation,” is to contemplate a mind-bending truth: We don’t start out young; we work our way back to it.
Many scientists now believe that mastering cellular rejuvenation may be the key to transforming how long and how well we live. Some hope that they might eventually be able to harness the process to cure hundreds of diseases, extend life by decades and even fend off aging entirely. (Sources: nytimes.com, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
2. China has launched a comprehensive national campaign against Alzheimer’s, as projections warn the degenerative brain disease could affect nearly 10 per cent of citizens by 2050. With the world’s fastest-growing dementia caseload set to sharply grow by mid-century, China is mobilizing top scientific institutions, major biotech firms and dozens of experts to accelerate the development of original treatments. (Source: scmp.com)
3. Scientists have been shooting particles into clouds since the 1940s, praying it will bring more rain and snow. While researchers agree that “cloud seeding” can work in a laboratory setting, many have doubted how much precipitation it can generate in the real world. But that hasn’t stopped Western states from blasting silver iodide into the sky for decades, hoping it will relieve harsh droughts. Now, start-up company Rainmaker said it has proved its cloud-seeding drones produced 142 million gallons of water in the form of snow. Some scientists said it’s too soon to know if the results are legitimate, as the data has yet to be peer reviewed, and even then it is a small amount of water in the face of the West’s intense drought. But if confirmed it could be a breakthrough, making it the first commercial cloud-seeding operation to prove it made precipitation. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
4. The sophisticated theft of 15 crop-spraying drones last month in New Jersey has the FBI worried as experts warn of “ridiculously bad” consequences and “a potential nightmare scenario” if terrorists get their hands on the machines. The unsolved theft has revived fears rampant in the post-9/11 years that terrorists might use crop dusters to disperse biological or chemical weapons with the aim of inflicting mass casualties inside the United States. The difference now is that the potential threat consists not of one pilot flying a small propellor-driven plane, but more than a dozen remotely piloted vehicles. Heightening the concern even further is the fact that the crime occurred against the backdrop of the United States’ war against Iran. (Source: thehighside.substack.com)
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