1 in 4 Nonantibiotic Drugs Linked to Disrupted Gut Health
'This can be dangerous to frail or elderly people,' senior study author Lisa Maier, said in a press statement.
Scale of Problem 'Utterly Unexpected'
The study, recently published in Nature, found that 28 percent of 53 tested nonantibiotic medications promoted the growth of harmful pathogens like Salmonella in laboratory models, potentially leaving millions of patients vulnerable to serious intestinal infections.
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Epoch Times
14 hours ago
- Epoch Times
1 in 4 Nonantibiotic Drugs Linked to Disrupted Gut Health
While patients have long known that antibiotics can disrupt gut health, researchers have now discovered that seemingly harmless medications—including common allergy pills, antidepressants, and hormone treatments—may also pose a threat to the protective bacteria that keep dangerous pathogens at bay. 'This can be dangerous to frail or elderly people,' senior study author Lisa Maier, said in a press statement. Scale of Problem 'Utterly Unexpected' The study, recently published in Nature, found that 28 percent of 53 tested nonantibiotic medications promoted the growth of harmful pathogens like Salmonella in laboratory models, potentially leaving millions of patients vulnerable to serious intestinal infections.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Scientists Are Worried About A Collapse Of This Atlantic Ocean Current: Here's Why
A certain current in the Atlantic Ocean that is essential for temperature regulation is in danger of collapsing. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, also known as the AMOC, runs the length of the Atlantic Ocean, including the tip of South America, the Caribbean, and all the way north to Greenland. One of its major benefits is maintaining the European climate by moving warm air from the Equator north. Climatologist and oceanographer at the National Research Center, Sandro Carniel, explained the AMOC's function to Renewable Matter. "This circulation, of which the Gulf Stream is a part, plays the fundamental role of a climate equalizer and is essentially triggered by the weight of water, its density. The colder and saltier the water is, the greater its density, and the easier it is for its mass to sink. Whereas if the water is warm and fresh (i.e., not salty), it is lighter and therefore stays at the surface more." The extreme importance of the AMOC is being threatened by greenhouse gas emissions, a driving force in global warming. Global warming would be a direct contributor to an AMOC collapse. If this is not prevented, the consequences could be catastrophic and include drastic temperature changes, altered weather patterns, and even an ice age event. Read more: This Is How Most Life On Earth Will End Why Would This Atlantic Current Collapse? Global warming is disrupting the way the currents flow due to melting ice caps and glaciers. Carniel continued to explain to Renewable Matter, "The huge amounts of melting ice are pouring an incredible amount of fresh water into the North Atlantic. Less and less salty and warmer waters are helping to lag the general circulation of currents." This is not a new or sudden phenomenon. In 2018, the journal Nature revealed that the buoyancy of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation had decreased by 15 percent over 70 years. While the AMOC has been affected due to global warming, it has not collapsed yet. To prevent this, greenhouse gas emissions need to be massively reduced. Industrial and manufacturing activities, transportation, and animal agriculture are all driving forces behind large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Despite efforts to implement better renewable energy and cleaner practices, the UN claims we are failing at attempts to control climate change. What Would Happen If The AMOC Collapsed? If the AMOC collapsed, European cities would get colder by up to 27 degrees within a few decades. So a temperature of 41 degrees could drop to 14. Comparatively, the Southern Hemisphere would get much warmer. Rising sea levels could send coastal regions underwater and also contribute to increased coastal erosion and more severe storm surges. The impact on weather patterns would be widespread. Europe would experience more violent storms. Major droughts would plague Asia. The changing weather would drastically reduce crop yield, and a full ecosystem collapse could occur across the northern Atlantic. Scientists have a historical reference point for such an event. About 12,900 years ago, the AMOC was halted when Lake Agassiz melted and unleashed massive amounts of freshwater into the sea. It's believed the lake's melting was caused by a comet. The subsequent halt of the AMOC caused over one thousand years of ice age conditions in parts of Europe and North America. Unless we are able to get a handle on global warming and protect the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, this could be the future we have to prepare for. Read the original article on BGR. Solve the daily Crossword
Scientific American
a day ago
- Scientific American
First-Ever Antimatter Qubit Could Help Crack Cosmic Mysteries
Physicists have created a quantum bit, or qubit, the fundamental storage unit of a quantum computer, out of antimatter for the first time. The researchers used magnetic fields to trap a single antiproton—the antimatter version of the protons inside of atoms—and measured how fast its spin changed direction for almost a full minute. The findings were published on July 23 in the journal Nature. Quantum computers made of antimatter qubits are still a long way off and would be much harder to build than matter quantum computers—which are already extremely tricky. The feat is exciting, however, because of what such antimatter experiments could reveal about the universe itself. A particle's spin can be in a state of 'up' or 'down,' just like a computer bit can take on a state of '0' or '1.' But where a classical bit must be in either of the latter two states, the antiproton qubit's spin could be up, down or any combination of both at the same time. This fantastical ability of qubits is what sets them apart from classical bits and promises that quantum computers will one day offer incredible improvements in calculation speed and ability compared with today's computers. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The experiment demonstrated an unprecedented level of control over antimatter, says physicist Vincenzo Vagnoni of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), who was not involved in the experiment. 'This is thanks to [the researchers'] development of highly efficient antiproton magnetic traps, which can keep antiprotons 'alive' without them annihilating with matter. While we are still far from the curvature engines of the Star Trek saga, this is the closest thing to them that has been developed on Earth so far,' Vagnoni says, referring to the science-fiction franchise's warp drive engines fueled by antimatter. Setting sci-fi aspirations aside, the achievement could help physicists solve the mystery of why the universe is dominated by matter and not antimatter—in other words, why the universe around us exists at all. 'If you are just looking into the physics, there's absolutely no reason why there should be more matter than antimatter,' says Stefan Ulmer, a physicist at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, and spokesperson for its Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE). Yet there is almost no antimatter in the cosmos, whereas matter is abundant. 'The big motivation for these experiments is: we are looking for the reason why there might be a matter-antimatter asymmetry,' Ulmer says. One potential reason could be a difference between the proton and the antiproton in a property called the magnetic moment. Protons and antiprotons have electric charge—the proton's charge is positive, and the antiproton's is negative. These charges make the particles act like little bar magnets that point in different directions depending on the orientation of their spin. The strength and orientation of the magnet is called the particle's magnetic moment. If it turns out that the magnetic moments of protons and antiprotons are not the same, that could explain why matter won out over antimatter in the universe. So far, measurements have found no difference between the two to an accuracy of 1.5 parts in a billion. But scientists had never before been able to measure the oscillation of the magnetic moment of single protons or antiprotons—or of any other fundamental particles. Similar previous experiments only measured the phenomenon in ions or charged atoms. 'We can now have full control over the spin state of a particle,' says the new study's lead author Barbara Latacz of CERN and the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Japan. 'For fundamental physicists, it's a super exciting opportunity.' The researchers hope to use the technique to improve the precision of the measurement of the magnetic moment in protons and antiprotons by a factor of 25. If they ever discover a difference or find some other discrepancy between matter and antimatter, then antimatter quantum computers could become worth building, despite the difficulty. 'If there is any surprise in matter-antimatter asymmetry, it could be interesting to do basically the same calculations with matter qubits and antimatter qubits and compare the results,' says Ulmer, who is also based at RIKEN.
