Environmental News

Those in youtube enabled regions might enjoy:

Decoding Deception: The Psychology of Combati | EurekAlert!

 

White truffles may be the most expensive food. Catch up on those, wannabees, including a subtle link to Nutella (TM):

White truffles, Italy's gold, menaced by climate change

 

Science during the next 4 years:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu4907
https://www.science.org/content/article/research-advocates-see-no-good-news-trump-s-economic-immigration-agenda

 

Disappearing Federal data was a topic in 2017 but I think 'they got it covered' this time. Mass storage has improved a lot during intervening years.

 

Saffron is mainly produced in Iran but there are limitations on export, leaving Spain as largest exporter. Global production is about 500 tons; a notably small amount.

So one grows Crocus sativus and a small part of flowers are removed by hand. Floral production is inconsistent. But it can be grown in many places, and if hands are available ...

 

Political dark side pulls but my home is here. Take a dip in Biology:

Genes of ancient animal relatives used to grow a mouse: Study reveals hidden history of stem cells

or the challenging article referenced:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54152-x

Some words to define. A stem cell is like all cells in early zygote that are all the same. Fibroblast cells are always present in differentiating organisms and 'fence off' organs that go in different ways. Pluripotency is stem cells being 'stemy', or reverting differentiated cells to that status. Pluripotency can be re-established by Sox and PLU genes.

The cited study used Sox and PLU genes from primitive and distantly-related organisms to make mouse fibroblast cells pluripotent, and used those to make a mouse de novo.

I regret lacking skills to communicate my wonderment at what this may mean! Biotechnology now has much less limitations on what can be done. Fences on both good a bad things have been taken down. Welcome to the future.