The News Keeps Getting More Frightening

Without the Little Guys, 
The Big Guys Will Crash


More Super Scary News You Probably Don’t Know About

Let it be noted we humans are “the BIG guys.” The little guys we need to survive are: Insects  (tap here)(and here)- for pollination and a lot of other eco-services; tiny plants - for  ground cover and the land food chain; plankton for the ocean food chain…
And tiniest and maybe most basic: good MICROBES* for digesting our food, fighting off bad microbes plus helping us develop properly. 

 In the “develop properly” category, how about the avoidance of obesity, diabetes, IBS, asthma and general allergies? (plus probably even more.) Check this. 

The BIG news is about the stunning decline in the tinniest guys, 
MICROBES
**
You need us, and we need you!

“Preserving microbial diversity” in Science Magazine reads like the first chapter in an apocalypse novel. Microbes that have co-evolved with humans since long before we even became people are vital to our good health. We’ve been wiping them out, hand over tea kettle, ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Some are so close to extinction, we are going to need “microbe banks” just like the seed banks for replanting when something goes extinct. 

Now that’s SCARY if you ask me.




*Bacteria, archaea, viruses, fungi and other microeukaryotic colonizers living in or on our bodies. About 300 trillion on thee and me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scooter Duff's Theory of Cosmology [A work in progress]

Image
 [Olde Duff Gets Seriouser] SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES  ARE MOSTLY PRIMORDIAL  DARK MATTER [Draft 8/19/2023] THE BIG NEWS.. ..Is from the James Webb Space Telescope. There were furiously active galaxies very soon after the Big Bang, not that long after the first generation stars happened. This implies supermassive black holes at the centers of the new galaxies.  The question, "how did these giant black holes get there so early?" seems not quite answered by the two main contenders, "Giant dust collapse," and "Many stellar black holes consolidating." Thus I decided to toss this hat into the ring: At the big bang, and dark matter was the first matter of any kind to form (perhaps during the mysterious “inflation” event -- my personal theory).  It’s mutual gravitational attraction and lack of interaction to any electromagnetic force allowed it to exist and start to coalesce, even in the heat of the BB, long before baryonic matter could.  There was a vast quantity
Read more

Rick and Morty

Image
A Millenial Hit Olde Folks Don't Know About Are you over 50? Have you ever heard about "Rick and Morty?" I thought not. There is a "cell" of younger people who love the show and say extravagant things about its wonderfulness. In these times when prior punditry had it we would be unified by some mysterious power in the Internet, there are more and more cells of people, unified within their cells, but isolated from most of the other cells of special interests*, tastes and proclivities.  The U.S. looks more like a pomegranate than a cantaloupe - to push the fruit/melon analogy to its extreme. I will dream up a graphic one of these days. USA, USA! society in fruit form. ANYHOO... I watched Rick and Morty at my millennial son's suggestion, and I LOVE IT. Eccentric old genius and non-genius grandson as the lead characters (faintly Back to the Future -esque) + sci-fi + Simpsons sensibilities +  intelligent satire + over-the-top imaginative creators
Read more

An Informational Present

Image
I TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS SIX YEARS AGO (Surely you remember ?)  ...And in those six years, multiple research projects have affirmed and reaffirmed that SENOLYTICS is a big deal. The science of senolytics: how a new pill could spell the end of ageing                                    * I'm reminded of this by a well-researched article in The Guardian , a newspaper I respect. Aside from that hyperbolic, click-bait-ish headline, it's a fair summary of the state of knowledge on the subject. In brief: Certain drugs and several supplements help the body get rid of senescent cells, "zombie cells" that don't die after they quit doing their thing and just hang around spitting out inflammatory chemicals that damage various organs, joints, and brain cells. The senolytic agents augment apoptosis , nature's way of killing off the senescent cells. When those senescent cells are gone, things start improving measurably (see the mouse with the young look in the Guardian piece.)
Read more