Hello everyone. After years of lurking here, I recently decided to register. I also decided to make my first post about some positive science news. A possible new treatment for Dementia using ultrasound waves in the news. Thank you Jeanne for creating such a wonderful community.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-07-dementia.html#nRlv
Hi Loveendures, Thank you for posting this. And welcome to our community!
I understand from a friend who is in the field of dementia research that most of the money goes towards pharmaceutical cures.
He's involved in an electrical stimulation cure, which his research claims is effective and inexpensive. I'm interested to see how the ultra sound waves method will fare in clinical trials. My friend said that it's hard to get funding for trials that aren't Pharma related though, even though a non drug cure might be cheaper and less invasive.
Thanks Jeanne.
So excellent news on the cancer front.
Researchers discover method to deliver herbal supplement curcumin to cancer cells by solving its insolubility. This has huge implications as curcumin kills cancer cells but is insoluble and can't reach the cancer cells well.
A research team has created a sophisticated metallocyclic complex using platinum that has not only enabled curcumin's solubility, but whose synergy has proven 100 times more effective in treating various cancer types such as melanoma and breast cancer cells than using curcumin and platinum agents separately.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-method-herbal-supplement-curcumin-cancer.html#jCp
A new device that sits inside a shipping container can use clean energy to almost instantly bring clean drinking water anywhere–the rooftop of an apartment building in Nairobi, a disaster zone after a hurricane in Manila, a rural village in Zimbabwe–by pulling water from the air.
The design, from the Skysource/Skywater Alliance, just won $1.5 million in the Water Abundance XPrize. The competition, which launched in 2016, asked designers to build a device that could extract at least 2,000 liters of water a day from the atmosphere (enough for the daily needs of around 100 people), use clean energy, and cost no more than 2¢ a liter.
While others have been using various ideas and approaches to get water from the air, the simplicity and portability added to the benefits of this plan and create a wonderful opportunity to actually be put into production and use in drought affected areas.
The research by scientists at Harvard and Yale universities, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, proposes using a technique known as stratospheric aerosol injection, which they say could cut the rate of global warming in half.
This is hypothetical to date but being published is a good step even for possibilities at this point!
Thanks for posting. I’m glad you posted this proposal. I had heard about it several years ago and I’d hoped they’d dropped it because it is so dangerous.
It is the kind of hubristic invasive tampering with nature that could get us all killed off in one year.
It is man who abused Mother Earth and now it’s time for man to back off and show her some respect.
These guys haven’t a clue how such a measure would mess with our weather — with drought especially. We know so little. So doing something like these guys are proposing is irresponsible and dangerous.
Whoa, good to know, Jeanne. Well, I guess we need to know they're still putting it in the news, so other scientists can oppose it.
And that must be why I felt such strong feelings about posting it. I really debated about it!
When I first heard about the aerosol idea about five years ago, and learned that the Bill Gates' foundation was providing a few million dollars to explore geo-engineering ideas, I got such a bad feeling.
MotherJones wrote a counterstory this past February, Devil's Bargain, Why Aerosols pose a deadly climate change threat.
The climate-denying Right wing loves these projects because it allows industry to continue polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gas then covering it all over with a "fix."
The only problem is how dangerous the fix is. These technocrats lack sensitivity to our earth, and should never ever be allowed to get traction with their foolish ideas. From the looks of the media stories that are bombarding the Internet right now, the technocrats at Harvard have launched a public relations campaign to get more funding. Fortunately they can't go ahead with projects without international approval
Nature's smallest organisms could help us to combat rising CO2 levels and even oil spills according to recent discoveries of deep sea microbes.
The microbes which were collected in the Gulf of California around 2,000 metres (6,562 feet) below the surface of the water, live in conditions where subterranean volcanic activity increases temperatures to around 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit).
In the new study, a total of 551 separate genomes were identified (including 22 that had never been recorded before) and the microorganisms were observed harvesting hydrocarbons such as methane and butane as life-giving energy sources.
"This shows the deep oceans contain expansive unexplored biodiversity, and microscopic organisms there are capable of degrading oil and other harmful chemicals," says lead researcher and marine scientist Brett Baker from the University of Texas at Austin.
"Beneath the ocean floor huge reservoirs of hydrocarbon gases – including methane, propane, butane and others – exist now, and these microbes prevent greenhouse gases from being released into the atmosphere."