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intelligentsia
The Intellectual
Keep up to date with cutting-edge progress
Take control of the week's major tech news in one hand
Written by | Wang Shuo Huang Yuxiang Egg fried rice
Editor-in-charge | Yu Qi
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1
Measuring blood pressure with both arms is more beneficial for the prevention of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases
Image credit: pixabay
Usually, when we measure blood pressure, we basically extend one arm to measure it, and ignore the other arm. A new study published Aug. 2 in Hypertension suggests that the correct measurement of blood pressure should be measured in both arms at the same time, with higher values taken from them.
Researchers at the University of Exeter in the UNITED Kingdom counted the two-arm blood pressure of more than 53,000 subjects (average 60 years old) and found that 11.9% of the subjects had low blood pressure from below 140mmHg to above 140mmHg compared to the arm blood pressure that was measured low, which means they should be diagnosed with high blood pressure. At the same time, the use of this measurement method can better predict cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and about 4.6% and 3.5% of subjects should be classified as corresponding cardiovascular diseases at high risk. So the next time you measure your blood pressure, remember to measure both arms!
► Article Links:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.121.18921
2
To understand why babies cry, parents have to learn from scratch
Image credit: pixabay
Babies only use crying to express their pain or discomfort before speaking, while adults' ability to interpret this "baby language" is not instinctive, but relies on acquired learning. Research published august 8 in the August 8 issue of the Journal of Contemporary Biology by researchers at the University of Saint-Etienne in France shows that it is in the process of raising babies that people acquire the ability to interpret the meaning of infant cries.
The researchers recruited people with no experience, parents who were caring for babies, and nursing professionals, and trained them for several days in cry recognition. It was found that parents who are caring for babies can easily recognize the meaning of crying from unfamiliar babies, while professionals have difficulty extending their experience to unfamiliar babies, and people who are not caring for babies can hardly recognize the meaning of baby cries. The information expressed by infants is contained in the structure of their voices, while adults continue to enhance this recognition by being exposed to this environment.
► Article Links:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.06.076
3
Human longevity may be the result of "natural selection"
Image credit: pixabay
In nature, the vast majority of animals die shortly after reaching reproductive age, but humans are an exception. There is a view that the "longevity gene" is also the product of natural selection.
Recently, a study by anthropologists at the University of California in the United States provided new evidence for this hypothesis: researchers quantitatively calculated the contributions of elderly people over fifty years old in indigenous tribes in South America to the contribution of excess food, care for young individuals, and intergenerational transfer of survival knowledge, and found that the elderly in hunter-gatherer tribes can bring significant positive benefits to the healthy growth of offspring. This means that in the hundreds of thousands of years before humans entered the agricultural civilization, the contribution of long-lived individuals to the growth of their offspring may have served as a positive "selection pressure", allowing the longevity genes to accumulate in the bodies of our ancestors.
► Article Links:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2200073119
4
Without the need for a maternal uterus, the study studies the cultivation of mouse early embryos in vitro
Image
Source:
Anusorn Nakdee/Shutterstock
The birth of embryos in the "glass jar" is a "famous scene" that often appears in science fiction movies. But in fact, the development of embryos is an extremely complex process, and current technology has not yet been able to make movies come true. Artificially isolated and cultured stem cells still need to be injected into embryos and implanted in the mother's womb to develop into a complete life.
Recently, the team led by Israeli scientist Jacob Hanna has gone further in the field of synthetic embryos: they started from the original embryonic stem cells (ESC) of mice, through chemical induction, in a newly built artificial uterine device, successfully cultured the initial cell mass to a state similar to the 8.5 days of mouse embryonic development, developed embryos and embryonic septums, and produced organ-specific progenitor cells. This work demonstrates the staggering differentiation potential of embryonic stem cells, but it is worth noting that 8.5 days is still only the early stage of embryonic development compared to the full stage of 20-day mouse embryonic development, and it is still far from conceiving a complete new individual in vitro. At the same time, the success rate of embryo induction is still low under the current conditions, and only about 0.5% of cell clumps can eventually reach a developmental state of 8.5 days.
► Article Links:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867422009813
5
Two common viruses may be the culprits of Alzheimer's disease
Image credit: pixabay
When children are first infected with the varicella zoster virus (VZV), they develop chickenpox, and the virus can lurk in patients like a time bomb, with serious consequences when it re-erupts.
Researchers from Tufts University in the United States and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom have shown that the varicella zoster virus may activate herpes simplex virus (HSV) and thus initiate the early stages of Alzheimer's disease using a three-dimensional human tissue culture model that mimics the brain.
Normally, HSV-1(one of the variant viruses of HSV) lurks in brain neurons and sleeps. But when they are exposed to VZV, HSV-1 is reactivated, resulting in a significant increase in tau protein and β-amyloid protein, which in turn slows neuronal signaling. At the same time, the researchers also pointed out that some people with COVID, especially the elderly, experience long-term neurological effects, and both VZV and HSV-1 can be reactivated after contracting COVID. In these cases, they say, it is advisable to pay close attention to the patient's subsequent cognitive abilities and possible neurodegenerative lesions.
► Article Links:
https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220287
6
Acidified oils effectively remove Salmonella from the surface of food production tools
Image credit: pixabay
Salmonella is a common class of foodborne pathogens that seriously affect food hygiene and safety. Salmonella cannot grow in low-moisture foods such as chocolate butter or peanut butter, but will remain on its production tools, remaining after disinfection and cleaning, and waiting for the next outbreak.
Recently, a study published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology took an ingenious approach to effectively eliminate Salmonella residues from food production and processing tools. The researchers first dried salmonella on the surface of stainless steel and treated it with different organic acids, changing the type, concentration, contact time and treatment temperature of the acid to determine a highly effective antibacterial formula. Ultimately, they used peanut oil containing 250 mmol per liter of acetic acid, which produced a significant bactericidal effect on dried Salmonella at 45 °C. The authors say acidified oils have the potential to replace dry disinfectants and improve food safety by increasing the frequency of disinfection.
► Article Links:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aem.00935-22
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