Lifeboat Foundation

Beyond fish? 3D-printed vegan salmon hits the markets in Europe thanks to foodtech startup Revo Foods.

Cancer relies on metabolism pathways to grow, which has Rogel Cancer Center researchers looking at how to use food and diet to exploit cancer’s vulnerabilities as a foundation of new potential therapies.

Learn more about the cancer research being done at University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center: https://www.rogelcancercenter.org/research/programs.

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When Karl Wenner looks at his farm on Upper Klamath Lake in the mountains of southern Oregon, he sees a landscape in transition.

He and his partners converted part of their fields of barley into wetlands along the shore of the lake to filter runoff and protect the quality of the water that eventually flows back into the Klamath River, which empties into the Pacific on California’s coast. The project is part of a larger effort to clean up the river, remove dams and bring back salmon.

At Lakeside Farms, that transformation is being guided by a surprising source of information: the pollen collected by tens of thousands of honeybees. A Belgian start-up called BeeOdiversity enlisted Wenner, who is also a beekeeper, to help in a survey in the Klamath River Basin. Each colony, with 50,000 bees, harvests pollen over an area of more than two square miles, collecting as many as 4 billion tiny samples in a year. The resulting data creates a clear, accurate picture of the plant life and pollution present in the environment.

Can artificial intelligence (AI) get hungry? Develop a taste for certain foods? Not yet, but a team of Penn State researchers is developing a novel electronic tongue that mimics how taste influences what we eat based on both needs and wants, providing a possible blueprint for AI that processes information more like a human being.

Human behavior is complex, a nebulous compromise and interaction between our physiological needs and psychological urges. While artificial intelligence has made great strides in recent years, AI systems do not incorporate the psychological side of our human intelligence. For example, emotional intelligence is rarely considered as part of AI.

“The main focus of our work was how could we bring the emotional part of intelligence to AI,” said Saptarshi Das, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State and corresponding author of the study published recently in Nature Communications.

In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers have discovered a new species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it. The replica is so precise, it even mirrors the termites’ distinct body segments and has three pairs of pseudoappendages that resemble antennae and legs.

Rove beetles (family Staphylinidae) are already infamous in the animal kingdom as masters of disguise. Some, for example, have evolved to look like army ants, allowing the beetles to march alongside them and feed on their eggs and young.

The new beetle species (Austrospirachtha carrijoi)—found beneath the soil in Australia’s Northern Territory—emulates a termite by enlarging its abdomen, a phenomenon known as physogastry. Evolution has reshaped this body part into a highly realistic replica of a termite (as seen above), head and all, which rides on top of the rest of the beetle’s body. The beetle’s real, much smaller head peeks out from beneath its termite disguise, the authors report this month in the journal.

Solar-and wind-based EV charger originally designed for off-grid farms.

If you believe the headlines, seaweeds can do almost anything from storing tons of carbon and stopping cows from belching methane, to making biofuels and renewable plastics – all while sustaining vibrant coastal ecosystems and feeding communities.

Add to that list their potential wound-healing properties and possible anti-aging effects, and it’s no wonder the seaweed farming industry is booming.

A new study adds to that fanfare, with lab experiments based on human-like skin cells revealing extracts from two brown seaweeds can inhibit reactions linked to skin aging and boost collagen levels.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) dropped never-before-seen photos of one of Saturn’s moons while comparing them to well-known food dishes. Ravioli, pierogi, empanada… What…

The patch can calibrate the glucose measurements based on the pH and temperature changes in sweat due to factors such as exercise and eating.

A team of researchers at Penn State has developed a new wearable patch that can monitor your health by analyzing your sweat. The patch, which is made of a special material that can detect glucose, pH, and temperature in sweat, can provide valuable information about your body’s condition and help diagnose and manage diseases such as diabetes.

Credit: Kate Myers/Penn State.

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