Emotional well-being in adulthood
FINLAND
A study of different ages, 36, 42, 50, 61, etc., conducted at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, showed that mood and life satisfaction are linked to people’s experiences of their health. Emotional well-being was also found to predict subjective health up to 11 years after event.
Engineering bacteria to fight acne
SPAIN
Acne is a common skin condition caused by the blockage or inflammation of the pilosebaceous follicles. The most severe cases of acne are treated with antibiotics to kill bacteria living in the follicles, these treatments can cause serious side effects. “We engineered a bacterium that lives in the skin and make it produce what our skin needs. Here, we focused on treating acne, but this platform can be extended to several other indications,” says Nastassia Knödlseder, first author of the study. Although any living therapeutics strategy should be validated individually, the researchers show their optimism in applying these smart microbes to humans given the successful history of non-engineered meds.
Neural prostheses
USA
It’s estimated that 42 million people in the U.S. live with some form of movement disorder springing from a neurological issue, according to the National Institutes of Health. That number is projected to rise further as life expectancy increases. In a recent study published in Nature, animals of the same or different species exhibited remarkably similar brain activity while performing the same tasks, a discovery that may help scientists better understand how mammalian brains initially evolved. This could also open the door for assistive devices utilizing a brain-computer interface – anything from robotic limbs to computer cursors controlled by a paralyzed person’s brain signals.
Meat and dairy pushing to change methane measuring
UNITED KINGDOM
Not all greenhouse gases are created equal. Methane, is more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere, but how are we measuring. Lobbyists from the livestock industry were out in force at the COP28 UN climate summit. To promote adoption of a new way of measuring methane emissions that lets high polluters evade their responsibility to make big emissions cuts. (Of note: the livestock industry is responsible for 32% of global methane emissions).
