An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: A new study suggests that people who take a class of common medicines called anticholinergic drugs for several years may be more likely to develop dementia as they age (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). Anticholinergic drugs include the antipsychotic clozapine; the bladder drug darifenacin (marketed as Enablex); the…
Tag: chemical
Popeye was right: spinach makes you strong
Scientists have called for a chemical in spinach to be added to the list of banned substances for athletes. For almost a century, the world-famous sai… Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/328678/popeye-was-right-spinach-makes-you-strong…
Do toxic gases make advanced extraterrestrial life less likely?
A new study suggests that many exoplanets – worlds orbiting distant stars – might have an overabundance of toxic gases in their atmospheres. If so, that would make the evolution of complex life forms more difficult. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/toxic-gases-habitable-zones-complex-life-exoplanets…
One Dead After Fecal Transplant Gone Wrong, FDA Warns
fahrbot-bot shares a report from Ars Technica: One patient has died and another became seriously ill after fecal transplants inadvertently seeded their innards with a multi-drug resistant bacterial infection, the Food and Drug Administration warned Thursday. The cases highlight the grave risks of what some consider a relatively safe procedure. They also call attention to the mucky issues of federal oversight…
Has the ball lightning mystery been solved?
What is ball lightning? Scientists have been trying to figure that out for hundreds of years, and now it seems they may finally be close to solving one of Earth’s most intriguing natural mysteries. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/ball-lightning-lightning-atmosphere-earth-optik…
Tombs in China reveal humans were smoking cannabis 2500 years ago
Chemical traces on 2500-year-old wooden braziers are the earliest evidence that people had begun growing mutant marijuana strains that could make them stoned Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2206431-tombs-in-china-reveal-humans-were-smoking-cannabis-2500-years-ago/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Type A Blood Converted To Universal Donor Blood With Help From Bacterial Enzyme
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: For a transfusion to be successful, the patient and donor blood types must be compatible. Now, researchers analyzing bacteria in the human gut have discovered that microbes there produce two enzymes that can convert the common type A into a more universally accepted type. If the process pans out, blood specialists suggest…
Observations unveil chemical structure of the protoplanetary disk Oph-IRS 67
Using the Submillimeter Array (SMA), astronomers have conducted a molecular line study of the protoplanetary disk Oph-IRS 67, uncovering essential information about its chemical structure. Results of this study were presented in a paper published June 3 on the arXiv pre-print server. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-06-unveil-chemical-protoplanetary-disk-oph-irs.html…
Alan Turing Receives a (Late) Obituary From the NYT
“In recent years, The New York Times has been publishing obituaries of people long dead but who nevertheless would have been deserving of one when they died,” writes Slashdot reader necro81. “They call it their ‘Overlooked’ series. Today, their overlooked figure is British mathematician and prototype computer scientist Alan Turing.” Here’s an excerpt from the obituary: His genius embraced the first…
Mud ball meteorites rain down in Costa Rica
“Mud ball” meteorites – full of clays, organics and water – are unique among space rocks. And a lot of them fell in April 2019 on a small town in Costa Rica, much to the delight of scientists. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/mudball-meteorite-fall-aguas-zarcas-costa-rica-2019…