▎WuXi AppTec content team editor
Been swiping your phone for more than 3 hours? It's not just vision that worries you
Short videos, games, online lessons... Various apps make many teens spend more and more time swiping their phones or tablets every day. Many parents are concerned that excessive screen time affects their children's vision, but a new report warns that teens' spinal health is also related to mobile phones. Cumulative mobile phone use for more than 3 hours a day, semi-lying or lying on the side using mobile phones or tablets are important risk factors for thoracic pain (TSP) in adolescents.
Image source: 123RF
Thoracic spine pain is mainly manifested as soreness between the chest and back and left and right shoulder blades, and can occur in adults, adolescents, and children. The report, published in Healthcare, focuses on middle school students aged 12~18. After a one-year follow-up of 1,400 Brazilian middle school students, researchers found that the proportion of new thoracic spine pain reached 10%, and the proportion of persistent thoracic spine pain was as high as 38%. The onset of thoracic spine pain was significantly related to the use time and posture of mobile phones and tablets.
The researchers also cautioned that back pain in adolescents is often associated with less activity, poorer academic performance, and more psychosocial problems. How much time do you spend on your phone or tablet every day? If you also have frequent back pain, take control of your screen time.
The reason why dieting to lose weight is easy to rebound
To lose weight through dieting, the saddest hurdle may not be the diet itself, but the easy rebound of weight. In fact, this is because during dieting, the brain's neural circuitry for hunger undergoes profound and long-term changes to combat changes in weight. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism in Germany and Harvard Medical School in the United States have revealed this through animal experiments. The findings were published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
The researchers evaluated the brains of the mice after dieting, and found that a group of neurons that specifically promote hunger (AgRP neurons) sent more signals than would otherwise occur if they were not on a diet once activated, meaning that the hunger signal was amplified and the brain was prompted to eat more. And this change will continue for a long time until the mice regain their pre-weight weight.
The researchers tried to inhibit this neural circuit, which could effectively alleviate weight regain in weight-losing mice. They hope to use this clue to find new treatments that will help people lose weight successfully.
DOI:10.1016/j.cmet.2023.03.002
Partner protein that promotes cancer-suppressing effects
Tumor suppressor genes prevent cells from proliferating uncontrollably and initiate apoptosis to get rid of malignant cells. For example, TP53 is a classic tumor suppressor gene, but its mutation frequency in cancer is also very high, and more than half of cancer cases TP53 will be inactivated and dormant. Therefore, many studies are also looking for ways to reactivate TP53 and the protein p53 it encodes.
The new Cell Report study, which screened the genome genes one by one through CRISPR, identified FAM193A, a protein necessary to activate p53, which is considered a potent positive regulator of p53 activity. When FAM193A is destroyed, the function of p53 is also suppressed, because the former will bind to p53's inhibitory element MDM4, thereby releasing the full function of p53. The researchers believe that activating FAM193A in some cancers may become a potential anti-cancer therapy.
DOI:10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112230
Scientists have found ways to increase thermogenic fat production
There are two main types of fat in our body, white adipose tissue (WAT) is responsible for storing energy, and brown adipose tissue (BAT) is responsible for burning energy and producing heat to maintain normal body temperature. But new research in Nature Communications suggests that there is also a beige fat whose precursor cells are consistent with WAT and are both adipocyte progenitor cells (APCs), which are also subtypes of WAT, but whose function is thermogenic rather than storing fat.
Studies have found that with age, APC seems to be more inclined to produce WAT than beige fat, which is also the reason for poor metabolic function and fat accumulation during aging. Aging APCs often overexpress a Pdgfrβ receptor protein, which causes beige adipocytes to be inhibited, and if the Pdgfrβ-coding gene is deleted in old mice, they can restore beige adipocytes and obtain a healthier metabolic status, which may be a potential target for the treatment of metabolic diseases.
The glacier retreated much faster than expected
A study published in Nature found that glaciers can retreat as much as 600 meters a day in the context of a warming climate, which is 20 times the maximum speed previously estimated.
▲ The "fold ridge" observed on the ocean floor near Norway is a landform created by tidal activity (Image source: ©Kartverket)
The research team from the United Kingdom and Norway mapped the ocean-floor "corrugation ridge" structure, which is formed by tides that cause the glacier's receding edge to move up and down, pushing ocean floor sediment toward the ridge as it descends. These formations formed about 20,000 years ago, just at the end of the last glacial age. The results showed that the glacier at that time could experience rapid retreat of 50-600 meters per day, far exceeding satellite monitoring data. The authors note that with the trend of climate warming, in parts of Antarctica, especially where the ocean floor is flat, we may soon be able to observe the short but extremely rapid receding "pulse" of glaciers.
ChatGPT influences users' moral judgments
ChatGPT developed by OpenAI is undoubtedly the hottest AI chatbot model in recent times, and while changing the way people work in multiple fields, ethical issues around ChatGPT have also attracted attention. This week, a study published in Scientific Reports suggested that human users' judgments of ethical dilemmas may be influenced by ChatGPT.
In this study, the authors presented ChatGPT with the classic trolley conundrum, and in multiple questions, ChatGPT sometimes gave the answer "one person's life should be sacrificed to save more people", and sometimes the opposite answer, suggesting that ChatGPT itself does not take a certain position. The authors then asked human volunteers to read ChatGPT's statements before answering the tram puzzle and whether their answers were influenced by ChatGPT.
The results showed that volunteers were more likely to choose which outcome to choose, depending on whether the statements they saw were for or against sacrificing a minority. Although 80% of the volunteers said their responses were not affected, the actual results were the opposite, suggesting that volunteers may have underestimated the impact of ChatGPT on their own moral judgments. Therefore, future chatbot designs need to consider this factor.