Sea Anemone Bacteria Might Be the Key to Restoring Damaged Hearing and Other Tech Today
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science and technology news from around the world! Let’s get started with the
latest digest for today.
Sea Anemone Bacteria
Might Be the Key to Restoring Damaged Hearing
We’re big into health tech, and are always on the hunt for
the latest health innovations today. In another classic case of science
borrowing from nature, researchers at the University of Louisiana have used
bacteria from sea anemones to repair cochlear hair cells in mice, paving the
way for restoring damaged hearing permanently.
Sea anemones have hair bundles which have similar properties
to hair fibers present in the human ear. After enduring any type of trauma,
they can restore almost 50% of their body mass in only ~8 minutes. “It occurred to me that if any animal could
recover from damage to its hair bundles, anemones would be the ones,” said Glen
M. Watson, co-author and lead researcher of the study. He states that the
cochlear hair cells in mice had “recovered significantly”. “The sea anemone
proteins had repaired the damaged mouse cells,” he added.
Scotland Was Powered Completely
by Wind on August 7 with Some Left to Spare
We’ve talked about countries like Germany
running on 95% renewable energy on a single day, and Portugal
running on renewable energy for 4 days straight. And, as more nations keep
up with the global energy conservation movement, Scotland has risen to the
occasion by generating 39,545 megawatt-hours (MWh) on August 7, exceeding their
overall consumption of 37,202 MWh – thus, leaving some to spare.
“While it’s not impossible that this has happened in the
past, it’s certainly the first time since we began monitoring the data in 2015
that we’ve had all the relevant information to be able to confirm it. However,
on the path to a fully renewable future, this certainly marks a significant
milestone,” said Director Lang Banks, WWF Scotland.
Gene Doping Poses
Risk at Rio Olympics
After famous accusations and revelations about doping by
accomplished sports personas, we see a new kind of fear with the advent of
future technologies such as gene modification – wiz. Gene doping.
Carl Sundbery, exercise physiologist at Sweden’s Karolinska
Institute, analyzed & reviewed the new gene doping test for the World
Anti-Doping Agency. “We feel there’s a great risk this novel technology will be
used. So we are being proactive for the first time,” he said.
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