Sergio Parra

A study by scientists at Kyoto University and Fukui University reports that an antibody to a gene (uterine sensitization-associated gene-1 or USAG-1) can stimulate tooth growth in mice who suffer from dental agenesis, a congenital condition.

The study is the first to show the benefits of monoclonal antibodies in tooth regeneration and provides a new therapeutic framework for a clinical problem that can currently only be solved with implants and other artificial measures. He study has been published in Science Advances.

dental anesia

The dental agenesis This is what we commonly know as the lack or absence of a tooth. It is a defect in which certain teeth do not erupt in the mouth due to the absence of these pieces. It is quite common in a high percentage of human beings. It can occur in both permanent teeth and temporary teeth (baby teeth). Although the normal adult mouth has 32 teeth, approximately the 1% of the population has more or less due to congenital conditions.

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These are the oldest (and also the most expensive) false teeth

According to Katsu Takahashi, one of the main authors of the study and a senior professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Kyoto University, the fundamental molecules responsible for the development of teeth have already been identified:

The morphogenesis of individual teeth depends on the interactions of several molecules, including BMP, or bone morphogenetic protein, and Wnt signaling.

In Xataka Science

From the first dentist to the first electric toothbrush

BMP and Wnt They are involved in much more than tooth development. They modulate the growth of multiple organs and tissues of the human body. Consequently, medications that directly affect its activity are commonly avoided, as the side effects could affect the entire body.

Considering, then, that targeting the factors that antagonize BMP and Wnt specifically in tooth development could be safer, the team considered the USAG-1 gene.

In Xataka Science

This is the land mammal with the most teeth: it can have up to 100

Therefore, they investigated the effects of several monoclonal antibodies to USAG-1. Monoclonal antibodies are commonly used to treat cancers, arthritis, and vaccine development.

Experiments with this antibody revealed that BMP signaling is essential for determining tooth number in mice. Furthermore, a single administration was sufficient to generate a complete tooth. Subsequent experiments showed the same benefits in ferrets.

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This new drug makes teeth grow in mice that lack them

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The resulting material shows high mechanical strength, stability when containing liquids and resistance to ultraviolet light. It's a new bioplastic developed using wood by-products, according to a study published in Nature Sustainability.

It can also be safely recycled or biodegraded in the natural environment, and has a lower environmental impact over the life cycle compared to petroleum-based plastics and other biodegradable plastics.

Discarded wood dust

The researchers used a wood dust, a processing residue that is usually discarded as waste at sawmills, and deconstructed the loose, porous structure of the dust with a biodegradable and recyclable deep eutectic solvent (DES).

As explained Yuan Yao, assistant professor of industrial ecology and sustainable systems at the Yale School of the Environment (YSE):

There are many people who have tried to develop these types of polymers into plastic, but mechanical threads are not good enough to replace the plastics we use today, which are mainly made from fossil fuels. We have developed a simple and direct manufacturing process that generates biomass-based plastics from wood, but also plastic that also offers good mechanical properties.

While the process currently uses wood byproducts in manufacturing, the researchers note that they are aware that large-scale production could require the use of massive amounts of wood, which could have far-reaching implications on forests, which is why the research team continues to investigate the potential impact on forests if the manufacturing of this bioplastic is expanded.

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More durable and sustainable bioplastics developed using wood by-products

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One of the most widespread urban legends around the world of public swimming pools is, along with the fact that if you pee a chemical product diluted in the water changes color and gives you away to others, that If you ejaculate in the water, it is possible to get a girl who splashes nearby pregnant.. Don't worry: you can urinate and ejaculate in a public pool without any of those worries (although of course it's better that you don't do it for everyone's sake).

And semen, for those who do not want to get pregnant, It turns out something like a substance contaminated by radioactivity. There are women who can't even tolerate it rubbing against their skin: what if, by mistake, it ends up entering the vagina? What if there are jumping sperm?

To take away some of the fear about semen, well, it is worth knowing how long is a sperm capable of surviving when it leaves our body in the race of life (being very euphemistic).

In Xataka

“An amazing experience”: we spoke with the first beta tester of Harmony, the sex doll with “artificial intelligence”

Sperm do not get along very well with vaginas

Ironically, sperm don't get along very well with vaginas. More than 99 % of sperm in ejaculate They die in the vagina before reaching the fallopian tubes., given the acidic environment of the vagina. Therefore, a man who has less than 20 million sperm per ejaculation is considered infertile.

After entering the woman's body, the sperm usually remains fertile between 48 and 72 hours, but only in ideal conditions, that is, during the days of ovulation, which is when the vaginal pH is above 6, which is the pH during the rest of the days (the degree of acidity of the ideal environment for a sperm is 7-7, 5, and the temperature: between 37 ºC and 37.5 ºC.)

In Xataka Science

On your mark, set, go!: the sperm competition

There are other factors that could influence the fate of the sperm. The work carried out by British researchers Robin Baker and Mark A. Bellis, although not yet conclusive, suggest that orgasm offers women a way to control male sperm. If there is an orgasm, more sperm is attracted. If there is not, it is repelled to some extent. If the orgasm occurs under the circumstances of infidelity, then the orgasm produces a greater number of contractions to attract a greater flow of sperm: why else would you run the risk of maintaining an extramarital relationship? Something like the effect of unblockers on drains. The cervix literally sucks.

In Trends

Sapiosexuality: there is a percentage of society that is mainly attracted to intelligence

If we ejaculate outside the vagina, the life expectancy of the sperm is very short. Depending on humidity and temperature, They can last only minutes. How long it takes for the seminal fluid to dry, which is where the sperm can survive.

By the way, spermatozoa were first distinguished in 1679 by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, inventor of the first powerful microscopes.

More information | The world | Very interesting

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What is the life expectancy of a sperm after ejaculation?

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Pessimism finds great acceptance in all social classes because it feeds our natural tendency to distrust the new, advances of any kind, luddite style mode.

And that prevents us from fully understanding how innovation affects not only our lives, but the effects of the innovation itself. He talks about this and other things the new book of Matt Ridley: Keys to innovation.

Serendipity and context

One of the great sources of scientific discovery is serendipity.: the scientist pursues a goal and, along the way, by pure chance, finds something he did not expect, which ends up becoming his main discovery.

In the same way, scientific discovery is not customizable: it works in waves that cover nations or cultures, waves that are more or less intense and rich depending on political, cultural or ideological issues. Because inventions are nothing more than materialized ideas. And ideas fly from head to head like viruses. And ideas have no owner: ideas are reformulations of other ideas that we borrow.

Keys to innovation (Guesses)

Today on Amazon for €25.00

And that's what Ridley talks about, relying not only on encyclopedic documentation, but also narrating it like good storytellers: making us participate in each small advance on the long ladder of innovation.

Innovation is the most important activity of our time: it brings spectacular progress to our standard of living, but also, at times, disturbing changes to society. Matt Ridley understands innovation as a haphazard process that advances from the bottom up and is a direct result of the human habit of exchange, and not as an orderly process that is set in motion from the top according to an established plan. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, which involves trial and error, and is never the creation of a solitary genius. The author draws these and other conclusions from the fascinating history of numerous advances that illustrate what innovation is and what mechanisms drive it.

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Books that inspire us: 'Keys to Innovation' by Matt Ridley

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The great leap towards civilization, prosperity, increased life expectancy and other recent milestones is not due, at least not directly, to the scientific revolution of Galileo and Newton, since most of the life-changing innovations of people hardly relied on new scientific knowledge (at least in principle), and few innovators who brought about these changes had scientific training.

In the opinion of the specialist in economic history Deirdre McCloskey, which has given most of us a better life It is due to "innovationism". Sliced bread is a good example of this.

Precedents of science

According to McCloskey, innovationism would be the tendency or habit to apply new ideas to raise the standard of living. And many innovations preceded the science on which they were based (Newcomen, inventor of the steam engine, or Arkwright, promoter of the textile revolution, or Stepehenson, father of the railroad, were men with little academic training and humble origins).

In Xataka Science

[Books that inspire us] 'The rational optimist' by Matt Ridley: does the human species' capacity for progress have limits?

Later, science would contribute to the increasing pace of invention, and the line between discovery and invention would become more blurred, but deductive thinking hardly had any impact in the early years of the industrial revolution, a time when philosophers of science were scarce. nature.

He bread is an interesting example in that sense: a way to cut bread automatically to make standardized sandwiches. This breakthrough took place in 1928, and in a small American town, Chillicothe, in Missouri, as explained Matt Ridley in his book The keys to innovation:

Many people tried to invent a machine to cut and package bread into slices, but it worked poorly or the bread became stale because it was not packaged well.

In Xataka Science

Are inventions discovered by scientists or businessmen?

He got it Otto Frederick Rohwedder for one crucial detail: he had to invent both the electric bread slicing machine and automatic bread packaging to prevent the slices from becoming hard. The rest was a stroke of luck. Chance, in innovation, is crucial, but that type of chance only occurs in certain ecosystems.

Innovation arises when there is freedom to think, experiment and speculate. It happens when there is freedom to trade. It appears when people enjoy a certain prosperity and are not desperate. It's somewhat contagious. It needs investment. It usually occurs in cities.

A good series to understand all the implications about innovation, and also those who resist them, whether they are Luddites, postmoderns or Malthusians, is the manga and anime Dr.Stone: a whole hymn to the virtues of Illustration. One of the characters, in fact, is a shaman fond of magic who will finally discover that science is much more powerful, but that innovation is what really makes the world worthwhile because it helps heal the wounded, allows see the short-sighted or help... make cotton candy or a cola drink. You can see more about this series in the following video:

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Sliced bread and "innovationism", not science, is what allows us to prosper as a civilization

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At the University of Cambridge, more than 80 % of more than 1,500 employees voted in favor of a motion to replace a university policy that requires 'respect' for beliefs.

This puts us on the track that academics in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in the United States, Canada and Great Britain also have an orientation towards freedom of expression stronger than many conservatives or moderate observers assume.

Under some assumptions

Most academics in the United States, Britain and Canada do not support firing academics who are politically incorrect, according to a new report from the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI).

The database of cancellations from the National Association of Academics records 65 campaigns against academics in 2020, a sharp increase from the 12-13 reported during 2018 and 2019. How much support is there for such actions among academics?

To find out, academics and doctoral students were asked on four hypothetical scenarios. These included one academic whose work found that 'greater ethnic diversity leads to greater social tension and worse social outcomes', a second where the researcher claimed that 'the British empire did more good than harm', a third in which ' children do better when they have two biological parents than single or adoptive parents', and a quarter where 'a higher proportion of women and ethnic minorities in organizations correlates with lower performance'.

In Xataka Science

Cancel culture reaches Steven Pinker: because of these tweets they want to expel the LSA researcher

Finally, subjects were asked whether a staff member who favored less immigration should be encouraged to find another job.

The results of 706 American SSH scholars are shown in the first table. This data shows that in most cases, only 7-8 percent of academics supported cancellation. Only in the case of the performance question was there a higher proportion, but even here it only reached 18 percent. British and Canadian findings were almost identical.

In Xataka Science

Freedom of expression in science is in danger and that is why the Intellectual Dark Web was born

More broadly, when asked whether they prioritize social justice or academic freedom, 56 percent of American SSH scholars answered academic freedom and only 28 percent said social justice, with the rest unsure. The Canadian results were similar. However, among doctoral students surveyed in a primarily American sample, 40 percent supported social justice versus 34 percent in favor of academic freedom.

Therefore, while most academics do not support cancel culture, many do not oppose it either.

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The majority of academics do not support cancel culture even if the researcher is politically incorrect (with nuances)

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A team of researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of Lethbridge has found evidence showing that Men with an older brother are more likely to be homosexual than men without.

In your study, published in the magazine Proceedings of the Royal Society B, comes to provide more data regarding the reasons, still unknown, for the origins of homosexuality.

Question of antibodies?

The study cited analyzed data from 10 unrelated studies that included sexual orientation for 5,400 men and also information on siblings, finding that those who had an older brother were 38 percent more likely to be homosexual than those who did not have an older brother.

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When you are a man and a woman simultaneously: bigender

They also discovered that The more older brothers a man had, the more likely he was to be gay.: Having three older brothers, for example, doubled the odds of a man being gay.

But the same could not be said of women. The researchers couldn't find any pattern in siblings, male or female, that changed the likelihood that a woman would be gay.

The researchers couldn't determine why birth order affects the likelihood of being gay, but they suggest it's possible that the mother's immune response having a male child has a subsequent impact on the babies born thereafter.

In Xataka Science

5 sexual habits of animals… not so different from ours

The theory, called maternal immune hypothesis, suggests that when a woman gives birth to a male baby, her body produces antibodies in response. The theory then suggests that the antibodies produced remain in the woman's body and somehow they reach the brains of future baby boys.

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According to a study, there is a correlation between having an older brother and being gay

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Beyond the Lombrosian concepts that were already stored in the trunk of pseudosciences, Artificial intelligence does seem to have found correlations between our face and our personality.

This is what it suggests a new study published in Nature whose results indicate that real-life photographs taken in uncontrolled conditions can be used to predict personality traits using computer vision algorithms.

Big Five

In psychology, the Big Five Model (or simply Big Five) is a taxonomy or classification of personality traits that analyzes the composition of five personality dimensions in its broadest sense, and can be correlated with certain faces, according to the aforementioned study. The big five would be: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

According to the study, these types of faces would correlate with such personality dimensions:

The initial sample included 25,202 participants who completed the questionnaire and uploaded a total of 77,346 photographs. Finally, they trained artificial neural networks (ANN) on a large set of labeled data to predict scores.

It is not well known whether these correlations have a true causal link and why. But if they had it, There are several theoretical reasons to expect associations between facial images and personality..

First, genetic background contributes to both face and personality. In addition to shaping the face, genes also play a role in the development of various personality traits, such as risk behavior, and the contribution of genes to some traits exceeds the contribution of environmental factors.

In Xataka Science

Face width predicts aggressiveness in men (not women)

Our brain, intuitively, would also find a face more beautiful or trustworthy based on facial patterns, just as we also unconsciously detect the other person's health, as suggested a study from a few years ago, led by researchers at Macquarie University, which developed a new computer model that can predict the status of certain health characteristics simply by analyzing a person's face.

The study, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, shows that the model is capable of detecting information on BMI, body fat and blood pressure levels.

This allows us to identify healthy people to mate or to form cooperative relationships, it is a mere evolutionary mechanism, which algorithms have now learned to identify with much more certainty. You can delve into all this in the following video:

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The face could indeed be the mirror of the soul, according to artificial vision algorithms

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Politics and its bitter daily controversies are now part of the media and even our lives with the same capacity for penetration as football or the tabloid press. Until very recently, Politics was not the main topic in the media, now it is almost always.

In it next study, still in preprint, it is suggested that being subjected to the daily ups and downs of politics, which forces us to position ourselves, polarizes us, disappoints us, makes us hate certain actors or show unbreakable adhesions to surf the cognitive dissonance, finally, acts as a stressor, evokes negative emotions and negatively affects our health.

Politics and psychological well-being

In the two experiments carried out in the cited study, more than a thousand Americans were asked to keep a diary for 14 or 21 days. At the end of each day, they had to record the political story they had thought about most that day and their emotional reactions. They were also asked to report other more general details about their psychological and physical well-being and their motivation to take any political action.

Next, an example of a person's 14-day diary. The blue line marks how negative your emotional response to politics was that day; Here, high means more negative, low means more positive. The dashed red line is a general measure of the person's psychological well-being. We can see that the two lines appear to move in a similar way. On the 4th and 8th, when they weren't thinking about politics, they felt pretty good, all things considered. On days with big political news, not so much.

In other words: politics can really ruin your day. In this study, Democrats and liberals had more negative emotional reactions to politics than Republicans and conservatives, but it's difficult to discern how much of that is about partisanship and how much is just about the specific content of political news on the days it was running. they are measuring.

Take action

Politics has taken on a leading role in our daily lives, which also pushes us to have more opinions about it, to attend more protests and to try to change what is established, but this overexposure also negatively affects our psychological well-being. How, then, can one be committed to politics without suffering for it?

Many of the subjects reported using some type of strategy to deal with their negative emotions, such as “cognitive reappraisal” (for example, reminding oneself that a situation is not as bad as it seems, or that even bad situations can have negative parts). good) “distraction” (disconnecting from distressing conversations or changing the channel to disturbing news) or “expressive suppression” (hiding your emotions from others in daily life)

It is understandable that people often try to regulate their politically induced emotions; and successfully regulating these emotions through cognitive strategies predicted greater well-being, but also a weaker motivation to act. Although people can protect themselves from the emotional impact of politics, commonly used regulation strategies appear to reduce action.

In Xataka Science

Why are there people with extreme political opinions?

The distraction is the most relevant technique, since it is linked to news evasion. In the first study, subjects reported trying to distract themselves from politics 80 percent of the days. Those who did so felt better, reporting lower levels of negative emotion. In the second study, subjects reported trying to distract themselves on 56 percent of the days, compared to the first.

But successfully distracting oneself from politics also, unsurprisingly, reduced subjects' interest in undertaking any form of political action: attending a protest, volunteering for a campaign, donating to a candidate, calling their senators, etc In other words, political news may make you miserable, but that misery can go a long way toward prompting you to do something about it. That finding was consistent among Democrats, Republicans and independents.

In Xataka Science

Americans are so segregated that they even live apart in the same neighborhood

To examine whether an alternative approach to one's emotions could avoid this commitment, we measured the emotional acceptance in one of the experiments (i.e., accepting one's emotions without trying to change them) and it was found that successful acceptance predicted greater daily well-being, but not an impediment to political action.

Overall, this research highlights how politics can be a chronic stressor in people's daily lives, underscoring the far-reaching influence that politicians have beyond the formal powers they have been given.

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Daily political controversies stress us and worsen our health

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A team of astronomers, led by Thibault Cavalie, from the Astrophysics Laboratory in Bordeaux, France, has tracked one of these molecules (hydrogen cyanide) to directly measure stratospheric "jets" on Jupiter (narrow bands of wind in the atmosphere, like Earth's jet streams). .

AND They reach speeds of up to 400 meters per second.

SOUL

These wind speeds, equivalent to about 1,450 km/h, are more than double the maximum storm speeds reached in Jupiter's Great Red Spot and more than triple the wind speed measured in the strongest tornadoes on Earth.

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Fly over Jupiter in this video created with images from NASA's Juno mission

Measuring wind speeds in Jupiter's stratosphere using cloud-tracking techniques is impossible due to the absence of clouds in this part of the atmosphere, so to directly measure Jupiter's mid-atmosphere winds for the first time Jupiter, the ALMA set (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array).

The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which collided with the gas giant in spectacular fashion in 1994. This impact produced new molecules in Jupiter's stratosphere, where they have been moving with the winds ever since. What has been done is to trace one of these molecules (hydrogen cyanide).

In Xataka Science

A new study estimates that orbiting Jupiter there would be about 600 moons (all larger than a kilometer)

The team used 42 of ALMA's 66 high-precision antennas, located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, to analyze hydrogen cyanide molecules that have been moving in Jupiter's stratosphere since the Shoemaker impact. -Levy 9. According to Thibault Cavalié:

These ALMA results open a new window for the study of the regions of Jupiter with auroras, something truly unexpected just a few months ago.

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Jupiter's stratospheric winds are measured for the first time and they triple the speed of the strongest tornadoes on Earth

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