Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: food

Continuing from Motherboard, “In an email to Motherboard, a DARPA spokesperson said that four research teams have received allotments of the $45 million funding from the agency as a part of Insect Allies, and that all teams have now entered phase two. The teams include researchers from Penn State University, the University of Texas, and Ohio State University.”

It isn’t difficult to tell what opinion this article represents. Do we need this, or want to trust people with placing genetically modified viruses in the crops that become our grocery store produce?

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If you’re planning a trip to Hawaii, be mindful of what you eat, the state’s Department of Health states in an advisory published last week. Officials are ramping up efforts to warn tourists about rat lungworm disease, an illness caused by a parasite that can infest human brains. The advisory follows an alert from the CDC that confirmed three new rat lungworm cases all linked to Hawaii.

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We found that eating one cup of blueberries per day resulted in sustained improvements in vascular function and arterial stiffness—making enough of a difference to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by between 12 and 15 percent.

Eating a cup of blueberries a day reduces risk factors for cardiovascular disease—according to new research led by the University of East Anglia, in collaboration with colleagues from Harvard and across the UK.

New findings published today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition show that eating 150g of blueberries daily reduces the risk of by up to 15 percent.

The research team from UEA’s Department of Nutrition and Preventive Medicine, Norwich Medical School, say that blueberries and other berries should be included in dietary strategies to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease—particularly among at risk groups.

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It’s comforting to think of the body as a machine we can trick out. It helps us ignore the strange fleshy aches that come with having a meat cage. It makes a fickle system—one we truly don’t understand—feel conquerable. To admit that the body (and mind that sits within it) might be far more complex than our most delicate, intricate inventions endangers all kinds of things: the medical industrial complex, the wellness industry, countless startups. But it might also open up new doors for better relationships with our bodies too: Disability scholars have long argued that the way we see bodies as “fixable” ultimately serves to further marginalize people who will never have the “standard operating system,” no matter how many times their parts are replaced or tinkered with.

Tech gurus are obsessed with treating bodies like machines—something a 30-year-old cartoon about a tricked-out detective suggests won’t work.

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Hours spent toiling away under the beating sun to harvest berries and fruit may soon be a thing of the past as robots look set to replace humans in the field.

A £700,000 machine built by the University of Plymouth has succeeded in plucking a raspberry from a plant and carefully placing it in a punnet.

The painstaking process takes a whole minute to get one berry because it requires a combination of soft robotics, clever AI and ‘deep learning’.

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A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Korea and Australia have found a possible link between the gut microbiome in infants and development of allergies. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of a certain antibody response in young mice and what they found.

Food allergies have been widely reported in the past few years, particularly in children. Scientists have been taking a closer look at the causes of the seemingly sudden rise in the number of people who are allergic to certain foods. In this new effort, the researchers looked into the possibility of a connection between food allergies and the gut biome.

The research started after some noticed that raised in a sterile environment (who also had no gut microbiome) expressed higher levels of immunoglobulin E (IgE) when they matured enough to start eating solid food. Prior research has shown that IgE is a mediator that plays a role during an allergic response—when allergens are detected, IgEs send out signals alerting other parts of the immune system, which in turn release chemicals that result in inflammation, a major allergy symptom.

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Some consumers place importance on locally grown or organic food. Others want the products they purchase to look and taste good. Yet others focus on low prices. However, no matter what their other requirements, everyone would like their food to be free of contaminants, which makes it quite worrying that over 97 percent of European food products contain pesticide residues. The problem is that current contamination testing processes can be long and expensive, and can only be conducted by specialist personnel.

A new device developed by the INSPECTO project team may now offer an affordable, fast and reliable solution to this problem. Coordinated by Inspecto Solutions Ltd, the EU-funded project has introduced a portable device that identifies in real time chemical contamination in food.

The scanner device can detect chemicals at specified by regulatory authorities. It also makes it possible for businesses to tailor their testing to their needs, scanning for specific sets of liquid or solid contaminants. Being able to conduct multiple scans in one day means they don’t have to wait for results. What’s more, the person operating the device doesn’t have to be a skilled chemist or technician, meaning that expensive and lengthy lab tests are eliminated. Farmers are able to measure pesticide residue levels on their crops and food producers can check for contaminants when purchasing produce. Additionally, supermarkets can conduct tests before distributing fruits and vegetables and quality assurers can enforce contaminant policies in the field.

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It’s possible to help reduce mosquito populations around your house without using nasty chemicals. Did you know that dragonflies are the biggest predators of mosquitos and can eat hundreds of them a day? This makes them a great addition to your garden and the safest natural pest control. They keep mosquito population in check.

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