Sergio Parra

Restaurant goers in Singapore They will soon have the opportunity to eat chicken nuggets grown in bioreactors.

In this way, the first meat product grown in a laboratory for human consumption has been given the green light. In the historic approval, Singapore regulators have awarded Eat Just, a startup based in San Francisco, the right to sell farmed chicken, in the form of chicken nuggets.

Guaranteed security

Singapore's regulator assembled a panel of seven experts in food toxicology, bioinformatics, nutrition, epidemiology, public health policy, food science and food technology to evaluate each stage of the manufacturing process of Eat Just and thus ensuring that the chicken is safe for human consumption.

Singapore's decision could spur the first wave of regulatory approvals around the world.

In Xataka Science

This is the first meat that has been produced in space

"It included details on the purity, identity and stability of the chicken cells during the manufacturing process, as well as a detailed description of the manufacturing process that demonstrated that the harvested cultured chicken met the quality controls of the rigorous quality control system. food safety," the company said.

Cultured meat is made like this: Cells are taken from an animal, often through a biopsy or from an established animal cell line. These cells are then fed a nutrient broth and placed in a bioreactor, where they multiply until there are enough of them.

The problem is that this type of meat is still expensive to manufacture. So Just's first chicken products use cultured chicken cells mixed with plant protein, although it has not been specified in what proportion.

In Xataka Science

According to the IPCC, to combat climate change we must eat less meat

At the moment, a large number of new companies have been founded using variations of this approach, in the belief that cultured meat will appeal to consumers. flexitarians: people who want to reduce the amount of meat they eat for ethical or environmental reasons, but do not want to give it up completely.

For example, Memphis Meats, which counts Bill Gates, Richard Branson and traditional meat maker Tyson Foods among its many investors, has teamed up with several other companies, including Just and farmed seafood makers BlueNalu and Finless Foods, to form a lobby group. working with US regulators to obtain approval of your products.

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For the first time, laboratory-grown meat is approved for human consumption

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Stating that there are genetic differences should not translate into affirming that we must also create policies based on these differences, at an almost eugenic level, or that it encourages racism, machismo and other isms.

This knowledge is just that, knowledge. If anything, if there are differences that produce deep inequalities, knowing these differences should allow us to correct these inequalities, not accentuate them.

Know to legislate better

If someone has a genetic propensity to do something bad (let's imagine that is possible), we should not excuse them, but rather create even more coercive measures to prevent them from becoming a victim of their own genetic determinism. Mutatis mutandis, finding that a race is genetically inferior at an intellectual level (for example) does not automatically mean being racist.

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The entelechy of equality or why we focus more on some discriminations and not others

On the contrary: by identifying a basic problem we can combat it better, as the cognitive psychologist argues. Steven Pinker in his book The blank slate: precisely identifying a genetic tendency can be the stimulus to monitor it more vigorously from a moral and legal point of view.

There is no reason to think that it is more difficult to fight against a genetic tendency than an environmental one, just as I explain in That wasn't in my genetics book.:

Knowing whether a particular group of people, whether black, women, or any other politically sensitive division, is less capable of something than the rest also allows us to correct it more effectively. For example: girls seem less interested than boys in mathematics. Do they have less mathematical intelligence? Is it something genetic? Or maybe it has to do with culture? Or maybe it's a mix of both?

That Wasn't In My Genetics Book (Scientific Dissemination)

RRP on Amazon €18.05

Another thing, of course, is that scientifically it is correct or incorrect to affirm that there are substantial differences between human groups, or that there is something similar to races (no, it doesn't exist: there is more genetic diversity between two black inhabitants of Africa than between an African and a European; we are all amazingly mixed).

Furthermore, it is difficult to isolate genes from the environment: we are facing an indisocial jungle that results in a phenotypic variance that is altered depending on as many dimensions as we are able to measure. There is always genetic influence, there is always environmental influence, and both genetic and environmental influence feed off each other in ways that we are not yet able to distinguish.

In Xataka Science

Some modern humans carry DNA from an archaic and unknown ancestor

There is no embracing genetic determinism, but neither is there any escape from it. Nor should we do that with environmental determinism: the criticism of poorly understood genetic determinism involves the assumption of an environmental determinism so inflexible that, if true, tIt would also turn us into puppets.

If you want to go deeper into this and other things, you can do so in this interview about the aforementioned book:

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The fact that there are genetic differences does not mean that we must also discriminate based on these differences.

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Iconic new images obtained by space missions such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes have been translated into sounds so we can enjoy it in another way.

The data sonification project is led by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) as part from the Universe of Learning program (UoL) from NASA.

Universe of Learning

Next, an image of the Bullet Cluster, which provided the first direct evidence of dark matter. Chandra X-rays (pink) show where hot gas is located in two merging galaxy clusters.

Data showing dark matter are represented by the lowest frequencies, while X-rays are assigned to the highest frequencies.

The Crab Nebula, meanwhile, has been studied by people since it first appeared in Earth's sky in 1054 AD

To translate this data into sound, which also moves from left to right, each wavelength of light has been paired with a different family of instruments. Chandra's

On February 24, 1987, observers in the southern hemisphere saw a new object in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

One of the brightest supernova explosions in centuries and soon became known as Supernova 1987A (SN 87A). This time lapse shows a series of observations from Chandra (blue) and Hubble (orange and red) taken between 1999 and 2013.

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Now you can listen to iconic images from space that NASA has translated into sounds

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No, jade amulets cannot protect you from COVID-19, although that is what a recent study which, fortunately, has already been withdrawn.

The controversial study suggesting that COVID-19 has become deadly due to un change in Earth's geomagnetic field.

Retraction

A study, published in Science of the Total Environment, is titled: “Can Traditional Chinese Medicine Provide Information on Controlling the COVID-19 Pandemic?”

Naturally, its publication has provoked outrage and criticism in the scientific community and has forced the authors at the University of Pittsburgh to request a retraction.

The co-authors of a paper that claimed jade amulets might prevent COVID-19 have tried to distance themselves from the work.https://t.co/Ek3UG0KtS7 pic.twitter.com/Q7AIqBgHwT

— Retraction Watch (@RetractionWatch) November 22, 2020

The lead author of the study, Moses Bility, is an assistant professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh. Which adds even more ridicule to this situation, in which a ridiculous study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The study, which is no longer available online, explored the idea that the new coronavirus is not new, but rather a virus that has been hidden in DNA and had been activated by a change in the planet's geomagnetic field.

The paper claimed that jade, with its own geomagnetic properties, can prevent the virus from making you sick.

In Xataka Science

Why is alternative medicine, traditional Chinese medicine and so on qualitatively inferior to conventional or allopathic medicine? (YO)

It's true that strong magnetic fields can influence chemical reactions, but the long-wavelength anomalies in this rat study are nowhere near what would be required to have such an effect. Also erroneous is the idea that jade can stop the symptoms of COVID-19, a theory based on records of practices in ancient China during a period of similar geomagnetic conditions.

We are facing a serious situation. This is not the first time that poorly reviewed studies have been published that they claim real atrocities, How do vaccines cause autism?.

And it is serious because, even if the studies are withdrawn, people are slow to forget statements like this: that vaccines can cause autism; which in turn reinforces conspiracy theories that may lead the public to circumvent actual scientific or safety measures. Because we have enough to face the scientific ignorance of our politicians to also add that propagated by the scientific auditors in whom we must trust:

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The controversial study that indicates that jade amulets can protect against COVID-19

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We have already seen kits to convert traditional bicycles into electric bicycles and to convert them into pedal-powered snow machines: this electric snow bike kit goes a step further by combining the two.

Manufactured by the Canadian electric mobility company Envo, eThe kit is designed for use with mountain bikes.

Shipping Kit

According to Envo, the kit offers a motor-assisted top speed of 18 km/h and is efficient for a range of approximately 10 km, or two hours of use, for 8 hours of charging.

It should be noted that the bike's chain length needs to be adjusted and its rear derailleur needs to be removed, so installation is not simple.

The bike's existing chain delivers power from the rider's legs to a sprocket attached to the side of the motor, while a 48V/17.5Ah lithium-ion battery pack mounted on the down tube provides electrical energy.

A crank-mounted sensor detects when the rider is pedaling, signaling the motor to activate accordingly. If the rider wishes, they can also activate the motor without pedaling, using a handlebar-mounted thumb throttle switch.

For relatively compact snow, users may prefer to keep the existing front wheel in place. However, for deeper snow, an included adapter allows you to replace that wheel with a snowboard.

In this way, the bicycle can easily cover any terrain, which opens a little more ground towards universal transportation. The electric bicycle is probably the next evolutionary step to the bicycle, which in its day already constituted a change in the mobility of society; it even worked like a kind of Tinder to meet future partners further away from your area and freed the women, as you can see in the following video:

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Envo kit turns regular bikes into electric snow bikes

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There are already many people who have put up the Christmas tree, the colored lights also shine in the streets... however, Some complain that Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier.

The good news for those who enter "Christmas mode" so prematurely is that they seem more sociable and are happier, too. The pandemic, in fact, has brought forward the decorations.

Christmas in pandemic

Today's Christmas can appear in our stores from November 1, since Christmas items replace Halloween products. At this point, we're used to the ever-expanding holiday season, but that's usually only seen in retail spaces eager to make the most of seasonal spending.

However, this year it has also reached many homes earlier, with news of decorations that were already placed on Halloween.

The festive tone has become a way to add joy and warmth to the gloom of pandemic restrictions. Christmas decorations bring back happy memories, and psychologists already suggested in a study than those who put up their decorations early They are happier than their peers and seem more sociable.

In Xataka Science

Chocolate is the enemy of dogs, and at Christmas the risk of ingestion increases

Because, according to the study, those who put exterior decoration in their homes can use the exterior of their home to communicate attachment and possibly to integrate into the social activities of a neighborhood.

Without a doubt, here we can find echoes of testimonies of soldiers in the trenches during the First World War, which viewed Christmas rituals on the Western Front as a connection to normality.

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Pandemic at Christmas: it is suggested that those who put up their Christmas decorations earlier are happier and seem more sociable

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It is not a fragment of Frankenstein's monster, of Mary Shelley: Inanimate matter can be animated with a simple spray. The spray contains particles of iron, polyvinyl alcohol and gluten, which combine with water to form sticky magnetic skins or 'M-skins'.

Thanks to the magnetic properties of the aerosol, ordinary objects such as origami paper and cotton thread have been brought to life, according to A study published in Science Robotics.

Millirobots

The researchers captured images of the 'millirobots' rolling, swimming and walking, but they also performed tasks with a more relevant purpose: simulated biomedical procedures. Robotic catheters navigated narrow blood vessels and egg-shaped capsules delivered medications to the stomachs of live rabbits.

This is the magic of this spray, which proposes a minimalist approach to building milirobots by coating inanimate objects with a magnetic bonding compound spray. As seen in the video, the real object of this experiment is to create milirobots capable of entering the arteries or the stomach, and removing blockages thanks to movement, or releasing medications:

This approach allows covering a variety of one-dimensional objects with a thin enough film such as to preserve the original size, morphology and structure of objects while providing a performance of up to hundreds of times its own weight. Under the activation of a magnetic field, milirobots can demonstrate a variety of locomotor skills.

In addition, the magnetic film of the milirobots can be reprogrammed and disintegrated at any time. The liquid begins to disintegrate after about eight minutes in a strongly acidic environment (pH 1), but its durability lasts up to about 15 minutes if an additional layer of PVA is added. while if the iron particles are replaced with nickel particles it could remain stable for even more than half an hour..

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An aerosol has been designed that turns inanimate materials into mobile insect-scale machines

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Charles Percy Snow, in his famous conference On “The Two Cultures”, he expressed it forcefully: «What do you understand by mass, or by acceleration? It is the scientific equivalent of Can you read?

That we see in the media intellectuals who are as scientifically trained as they are in everything else may be, for the moment, an entelechy: the minimum we should demand is that intellectuals who embrace pseudoscience be portrayed as anti-intellectuals. Because they don't base their opinions on evidence, basically..

Politically accepted nonsense

It is not about censoring ideas, or even avoiding exploring heterodox scientific ideas. The point is to consider deeply anti-scientific statements as uneducated, as the physicist emphasizes. Alan Sokal in his book Beyond intellectual frauds:

It would be better to imagine a continuum where well-established science (for example, the idea that matter is made up of atoms) is at one end; Next would be cutting-edge science (neutrino oscillations, for example) and dominant but speculative science (string theory); then, much further, bad quality science (N rays, cold fusion), and at the end, after a long journey, pseudoscience.

If you defend pseudosciences such as homeopathy, if you attack vaccines, if you suggest that 5G causes harm and a long list of ideas widely disseminated in the media, you should automatically be classified as an unread, uninformed, uneducated person, or perhaps even fanatical about some sectarian movement.

In Xataka Science

The “most important factor” of misinformation in English about the coronavirus is Donald Trump

Again, it must be emphasized that these ideas can be expressed with the same joy as Miguel Bose publish your nonsense about the coronavirus on their networks. There is no need to censor. What we have to do is conveniently label, criticize, and, above all, question the media that encourages such characters and the institutions that elevate them to the category of intellectual, wise, or even political.

Yes because Among politicians we can find a certain percentage of functional illiterates. (that is, magufos) who have even directed ministries linked to science, such as Health. In the following video you can see some of the most scandalous cases. Cases that, perhaps when we consider science as an indistinguishable part of general culture, will not take place again:

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If an intellectual embraces pseudoscience or nonsense, he is not an intellectual (and even less should he be a politician).

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Two lost notebooks Charles Darwin, one of which contains the iconic 1837 sketch of the Tree of Life, have been stolen and Cambridge University Library is asking for help to locate them.

In January 2001, the notebooks disappeared. But it is now, after an exhaustive search, that it can be confirmed that they have probably not been lost, but rather stolen.

Evolution Day

The call to find the notebooks It was released this November 24, coinciding with what is commonly known each year as 'Evolution Day', which recognizes the anniversary of Darwin's publication of The origin of species, November 24, 1859.

As explained Jessica Gardner, University Librarian and Director of Library Services:

This public appeal could be instrumental in bringing the notebooks back safely, for the benefit of all, and I would ask anyone who thinks they can help to get in touch. We would be very grateful to hear from any staff, past or present, members of the book trade, researchers or the general public, information that could assist in the recovery of the notebooks.

The image of 'Tree of Life' It is part of one of Darwin's handwritten notebooks. The notebook in question is stored in a custom-made blue box, along with a second similar notebook, where Darwin develops his theory in terms of geographical distribution, the origin of humans and classification by descent.

Darwin sketched his ideas around an evolutionary tree in the summer of 1837, having recently returned from his trip around the world aboard the HMS Beagle, more than two decades before publishing a more developed tree of life in The origin of species.

The content of the manuscript of the two notebooks, fortunately, was previously digitized, including the Tree of Life sketch, and is available at the Cambridge Digital Library.

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Charles Darwin's iconic sketch of the tree of life and help is requested to locate it

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The concept that the poor are poor because they deserve it or that they are somehow unworthy dates back to Victorian times.

However, according to this recent study on food poverty, these attitudes are still alive today, and are a very important part of How those who receive a benefit from social security are perceived.

Poor unworthy

According to the study cited, people consider or tend to consider that the poor are lazy, that they are not trying hard enough to alleviate their own difficulties, which makes them less deserving of help.

The idea of the deserving and undeserving poor is linked to our understanding of the causes of poverty: whether it is the result of “agency” or “structure.” Agency refers to the actions of an individual, while structure is the external forces that may have led to an individual's poverty.

If we are in the second case, then many people consider that the poor do not deserve help, as exemplified this tweet:

For example, if people with financial problems spent money on conspicuous or considered services, such as a streaming service or a manicure service, it was understood that they did not deserve help to feed their children. Or if they did not buy cheap and abundant food, they were considered to be somehow They did not manage their resources well and they deserved their situation. However, perhaps poor people are not so battered that they need to vent in one way or another, or have they not received enough support to manage their resources more intelligently?

It is something similar to when, in a Spanish television debate, a debater pointed out that an activist politician: "You are too fat for the hunger you are experiencing" (when in reality it is precisely the poor who are the most obese because they eat cheaper and more caloric food).

In Xataka Science

Losing purchasing power not only affects your health but also your life expectancy.

Poor people are usually born with various burdens, even at a neurochemical level, just as if they had been affected by a virus. They have less self-control, less tenacity, less intelligence, less ability to thrive, generally speaking; And furthermore, this is not so much a question of poverty itself as of inequality. So, in the debate over whether someone is responsible for their situation or not, we should at least be aware of it, as I elaborate in the following talk given at the BCNspiracy TALKS 2020:

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If it is perceived that the poor are poor because of their responsibility, we tend to believe that they do not deserve our help.

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