In the next selection of interesting science news of the week: Acetaminophen is one of the world’s most popular pain relievers. But as a group of scientists led by Ohio University neurologist Baldwin Way has found, this drug may not only relieve headaches, but also put you at unwarranted risk. In fact, previous studies have shown that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in paracetamol and similar drugs, not only has analgesic effects, but also reduces empathy, prevents people from noticing when their actions or words hurt others, and even impairs cognitive function.
Now, as Baldwin Way writes in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, “acetaminophen appears to suppress negative emotions when a person is about to take a risk. People simply do not feel fear. And when you consider that 25% of the population in the United States takes acetaminophen every week, it becomes clear that reduced risk perception cannot have important consequences for society as a whole.” And by the way, as previous research has shown, in some cases, acetaminophen doesn’t work at all for pain, it’s no better than a placebo, and it has a lot of side effects.
Despite the dark side of acetaminophen revealed by scientists, it remains one of the world’s most in-demand medications, officially recommended by the WHO, and the first line of defense if you suspect you have been infected with the coronavirus. “Imagine a scenario in which a person with pronounced symptoms of Covid-19 takes acetaminophen and then decides that there is nothing to worry about if they go out and meet their friends,” says Way, suggesting an urgent revision of the established attitude toward acetaminophen.
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The American space agency is ready to pay good money for the extraction of lunar soil. It seems that NASA, if anyone, has the largest reserves of its samples (space conspiracy theorists should be horrified: ah, so they didn’t go anywhere, that’s why there are no rocks). But it’s not that simple. What the agency needs is not so much the moonstones themselves, but enthusiasts willing to extract them. So it is willing to pay anyone who can find suitable samples, blow lunar dust off them, photograph them, and transfer ownership to NASA.
The stones can be left in place instead of being shipped back to Earth – NASA will still pay, albeit a smaller amount. The contract does not include a flight to the moon – that is only available to three countries at the moment – it is designed so that enthusiasts can develop robots (for a fee, of course) which will then be delivered to our satellite by NASA itself or other major aerospace companies.
The point is that the United States, as indicated by President Trump’s decree last year, plans to become a leader in extracting valuable resources from asteroids and the Moon. However, there are no international agreements or laws regulating such space exploitation, and the existing agreements have no legal force and are rather vague in their wording.
Companies wishing to participate in the tender are offered to submit plans for the collection of lunar soil or regolith (accepted from 50 to 500 grams, but it should be considered that if someone can offer a larger piece, NASA will not refuse) from any point on our satellite, provide photographic evidence that the soil is indeed taken from the Moon, and then transfer exclusive ownership of the samples to NASA.
20% of the cost of the samples promises to be reimbursed immediately, and the rest upon delivery. NASA believes the contracts will be worth tens of thousands of dollars. “We’re really buying regolith, but we’re doing it with the goal of demonstrating that resources extracted from the Moon can actually belong to the people who put their labor and capital into it,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
He promised that the method of sampling will be clarified later, but it is still unclear whether this means that the soil will be collected by astronauts and studied directly on the Moon, or whether it will still be brought back to Earth. However, it is clear that Americans are indeed determined to land on the Moon again by 2024, and to use local resources to prepare for a Mars expedition. In particular, specialists hope to develop the extraction of lunar ice in the polar regions of the planet to use it as drinking water, as well as for the production of fuel (after molecular splitting) necessary for the flight to the red planet.
Some 3200 years ago, on the banks of the Tollense River in northern Germany, an epic battle took place, one of the largest conflicts of the late Bronze Age. Hundreds of bodies were left on the battlefield, killed by wooden, stone and bronze weapons. Why these people fought remains a mystery; DNA analysis cannot answer such questions, but it can reveal something about the diet of ancient warriors.
DNA sequencing of 14 skeletons revealed that these people did not consume raw milk – they were lactose intolerant. “We had hoped to find two groups of people with different ethnic backgrounds (this would explain the confrontation on the battlefield), but no, they were all bored to death,” explains co-author of the study, geneticist Joachim Burger of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, published in the journal Cell Biology.
“Even the discovery of two female skeletons did not excite the scientists very much, but still a surprise occurred”. As it turned out, all these ancient warriors could not tolerate milk: they had not yet undergone the genetic mutation characteristic of most modern Europeans. As previous research has shown, the population of what is now Germany already had the ability to digest lactose between 1000 and 500 B.C., so it must have appeared earlier, but after the Battle of Tolentino. This means that over the course of 100 generations, the entire population of Europe experienced mutations. “This is the strongest selection ever detected in the human genome,” says Burger.
In 2007, he proved that the first European farmers, who appeared more than 8 thousand years ago, did not tolerate lactose either. Scientists then believed that the mutation spread with the development of agriculture and animal husbandry. The argument for this theory was that people who could digest milk got more calories, their children had a better chance of surviving, and the gene responsible for breaking down lactose was passed from generation to generation.
However, skeletons with battle wounds in the Toulon Valley vividly demonstrate that it took another six centuries for the gene to become established in humans. In addition, DNA analysis has completely disproved the theory proposed in 2015 that the gene was imported into Western Europe as early as the fifth millennium BC by nomadic herders from the steppes of modern Ukraine and Russia. So scientists continue to guess when and why Europeans started drinking milk. Burger has his own theories: He suggests that fresh milk helped boost the immunity of Iron Age city and village dwellers, and later of the Roman Empire, where population density inevitably led to epidemics. But this is just a hypothesis for now.
What will happen if you cross a Labrador Retriever (a hunting dog) with a Poodle (which is now considered decorative, but was once a hunting dog)? Absolutely right, you will get happy, joyful, curly Labradoodles whose first generation will have a 50-50 ratio of genes from both breeds. They began to cross these two breeds in the 1980’s in an attempt to create a guide dog that would shed very little and not cause an allergic reaction to the owner’s hair. The Labradoroodle service dog was supposed to inherit the skills of the Labrador and the hypoallergenic coat of the poodle.
In fact, that’s exactly what happened, but then the most interesting thing was discovered. DNA analysis of 21 Australian Labradoodles has shown that the genome of subsequent generations consists almost entirely of Poodle DNA. This means that their genes are gradually replacing those of the Labrador. So today’s Australian Labradoodles are more like poodles, with an excess of alleles determining the type of coat. And the study itself showed how changing just a few genes can lead to the creation of a new breed over many generations.