Université Laval
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Ace Bailey sends the shot away
Crime-solving tools are evolving. The RNC has a 3D scanner that changes how evidence can be analyzed A laser and a light can rotate 360 degrees, and information that is gathered can be shown to other experts, judges and juries. The CBC's Elizabeth Whitten spoke to the RNC's director of forensics Kathryn Rodgers to learn more about the new technology.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
100 years ago, scientists predicted we'd live to 1,000 years old
When Frederick Grant Banting discovered how to isolate insulin from animals in 1921, the young Canadian doctor—a WWI veteran and former farm boy—changed the calculus of diabetes forever. Prior to the 1920s, the disease killed more than 80 percent of preteen diabetic children. Banting's breakthrough replaced the sometimes toxic remedy goat's rue, or Galega officinalis, a flowering plant with glucose-lowering properties derived from guanidine. His discovery came during a wave of medical optimism fueled by new scientific tools and knowledge that were rapidly unlocking the mysteries of human anatomy, disease, and aging. The foundations for this optimism had been building for decades. Germs were first discovered in the 1880s, ushering in the golden age of bacteriology and numerous life-saving vaccines. Vitamins got their name in the early 1900s when London-based Polish biochemist Casimir Funk—one of many scientists seeking cures for common diseases by linking them to vital nutrient deficiencies—combined 'vital' and 'amines.' Rickets led to the discovery of vitamin D, scurvy to vitamin C, and vitamin B was tied to beriberi, a disease that causes weakness, weight loss, confusion, and, in extreme cases, death. Meanwhile, anesthesia transformed surgery from a grisly performing art with low survival rates to more precise procedures conducted in germ-free operating rooms. Bit by bit, medicine appeared to be conquering many of humanity's most pernicious plagues and thereby extending our average lifespan. By July 1925, Popular Science writer John E. Lodge even suggested that humans might soon be able to extend their life expectancy to 1,000 years. 'Thanks to the efforts of science in combatting the ravages of disease, the average span of life is increasing every year,' Lodge wrote. 'Are we to expect, then, that in time science will succeed in prolonging the average life until, like Methuselah, we measure our lives by centuries instead of by years.' Lodge envisioned a world where aging could be halted by replacing worn-out enzymes, transplanting organs, or manipulating an elusive 'vital spark.' Scientists, he claimed, might be on the verge of conquering death itself. A hundred years later, we're still not there, but we continue to chase immortality with the same zest. Just as a century ago, today that quest is fueled not by glamorous breakthroughs—even if history makes it seem so—but by painstaking, collaborative scientific research, yielding fresh medical insights. In place of insulin, vaccines, and vitamins, today we're captivated by gene-editing, cellular reprogramming, and immunotherapy. From biohackers injecting stem cells in search of cellular youth to billionaires like Bryan Johnson leaning on wearable tech for preventative health, blood plasma exchanges, and caloric restriction, the goal of outsmarting death hasn't diminished—the elixirs are just more sophisticated. And yet, we've come a long way in a century. In 1925, the average American lifespan was 58 years; today, it's 78.4 years, according to the US Centers for Disease Control. Such progress might seem meager compared to our grandiose early 20th century expectations, but the trend suggests that by the next century the average American would live to be a centenarian. There's even reason to believe—as there was in 1925—that current promising research might yield treatments as soon as the next few decades that significantly extend our lifespans while improving disease resistance. Consider how researchers in Singapore have extended the lives of mice 25 percent by blocking the protein interleukin-11. Scientists at the University of Rochester have successfully transferred a longevity gene to mice from naked mole rats, which live ten times longer than similar rodents. The gene, known for producing high molecular weight hyaluronic acid, or HMW-HA, extended mouse lives by 4.4% and improved their overall health. The researchers now aim to transfer these benefits to humans. In an ironic twist, a century after Banting's insulin discovery displaced goat's rue, a derivative of the pink-and-white flowering plant is back in favor. Metformin, a biguanide medication, has become one of the leading drugs for managing type 2 diabetes. Like its medieval predecessor, which was used for everything from increasing milk flow in livestock to alleviating plague symptoms, metformin has been similarly used or tested in myriad applications: as an antimalarial drug, influenza treatment, lactation enhancer, arthritis remedy, and cardiovascular medicine. Now, scientists have begun to piece together the mystery of metformin's versatility by mapping how it works at a cellular level. Recent research has shown that it may slow or inhibit cellular changes leading to inflammation and age-related diseases, extending lifespan. The cellular aging story stretches back to the late 19th century. As scientists were discovering germs, developing vaccines, uncovering the link between vital nutrients and common diseases, and improving surgery, evolutionary biologist August Weismann theorized that human cells had replication limits, which explained why the ability to heal diminished with age. By the 1960s, scientists had proven Weismann correct. Today, researchers are learning to halt and reverse cellular aging through reprogramming, an idea first attempted in the 1980s and advanced by Nobel Prize recipient Shinya Yamanaka, who discovered how to revert mature, specialized cells back to their embryonic, or pluripotent state, enabling them to regenerate into new tissue like liver cells or teeth. 100 years ago, the battle for television raged A century ago, suspended monorails were serious mass-transit contenders Why we can't squash the common cold, even after 100 years of studying it 100 years of deep-sea filmmaking and ocean exploration But none of this means we're approaching thousand-year lifespans. Most longevity interventions work only in tightly controlled laboratory settings or short-lived animals. Translating them into humans presents entirely different—and enormously complex—challenges. Even if we managed to double or triple the human lifespan, equally complex social challenges would follow: Who would get access to life-extending therapies? How do we support a society where most people live into their third or fourth century? What psychological toll does such extreme longevity take? The optimism of 1925 wasn't misplaced; it was simply premature. It still might be, but today's longevity researchers are armed with more sophisticated tools and a deeper understanding of biological processes. Whether today's tools and knowledge will finally enable us to defy death remains to be seen. If there's a lesson to draw from the past hundred years, however, it's that life extension is incremental, fragile, and often humbling. We've added decades to average life expectancy, transformed once-fatal diseases into manageable conditions, and dramatically improved the quality of life in later years. That's no small feat—but it's not immortality.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
Snacking on cheese late at night may haunt your dreams, Canadian study finds
A new Canadian study has found that a late-night cheese snack could lead to nightmares. The study, published in psychology journal Frontiers on June 30, looked at the link between food, sleep quality and dreams. It revealed that just over 40 per cent of participants said eating certain foods affected their sleep, with nearly a quarter saying some foods worsened sleep. A small group of participants, 5.5 per cent of them, said food even affected their dreams. The culprit for both pleasant and disturbing dreams? Dairy. It was most frequently identified as the food category with the most influence. When it came to nightmares, researchers found that a contributing factor was lactose intolerance. That could explain why munching on cheese before catching some Zs led to bizarre, disturbing dreams for some. According to the study, it's possible that gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms increase nightmares by 'increasing symptoms of anxiety and depression,' which can also impact sleep quality. As well as dairy, other types of foods linked to nightmares were sweets, meat and spicy foods. The belief that food can affect dreams goes back centuries, based on old tales and anecdotal evidence, the study explained. One such example, cited in the study, is a cartoon by artist Winsor McCay, showing a character that blames eating cheese before bed for bizarre dreams and nightmares. We certainly weren't expecting to see the relationship to nightmares to be so robust Tore Nielsen 'Although we had predicted that lactose intolerance might be related to dreaming… we were a bit skeptical and we certainly weren't expecting to see the relationship to nightmares to be so robust,' the study's lead author Dr. Tore Nielsen told National Post over email on Wednesday. Nielsen said, in a Frontiers news release, that it makes sense for lactose intolerant people who suffer from GI symptoms and disrupted sleep to have worse nightmares 'because we know that other bodily sensations can affect dreaming.' 'Nightmares can be very disruptive,' he said, 'especially if they occur often, because they tend to awaken people from sleep in a dysphoric state. They might also produce sleep avoidance behaviours. Both symptoms can rob you of restful sleep.' Nielsen, a University of Montreal psychiatry professor and director of the Dreams and Nightmares Laboratory, told National Post that researchers also didn't expect to see a link between food allergies and nightmares. Participants with food allergies and gluten Intolerance were more likely to report that food affects dreaming, while those with lactose intolerance were more likely to report that food causes worse sleep, per the study. Those with food allergies may be 'more sensitive and attuned to what they eat,' the authors wrote, making them more likely to attribute dream changes to diet. Meanwhile, having pleasant dreams was linked to eating fruits and vegetables and drinking herbal tea, as well as desserts and dairy. Researchers linked an unhealthy diet, in general, to nightmares. 'An unhealthy diet included eating in the evening before bed and not paying attention to internal cues about being hungry or full in deciding when or how much to eat,' Nielsen told National Post. 'It is possible that people with nightmares could find some relief not only by checking on their lactose intolerance and food allergy status and dosing their intake of the problematic foods accordingly, but by following a healthier diet.' Although the study's authors said that they still 'lack substantive evidence that these participant observations for food and dreaming are, in fact, accurate, there is some suggestive evidence for their accuracy.' The study's findings show how diet could inform interventions for sleep disturbances that don't rely on medication. Although the latest findings uncovered some answers, there is still a need for more research, including studies to find out if people can truly detect the effects of specific foods on dreams, Nielsen said in a Frontiers news release. There were 1,082 participants in the study, who were all undergraduate students at MacEwan University. The data was collected online from January to April 2023. The study's authors noted that those who took part could have been biased due to having academic exposure to related topics that influenced how they interpreted or reported the perceived effects of food on sleep and dreaming. One study published in 2022 in the International Journal of Dream Research observed whether or not substances and foods had any effects on dreams and lucid dreams (the person is aware they are dreaming). It found that eating fruits correlated to dream recall, while eating fish correlated with the frequency of lucid dreams. However, it determined that research on the topic is 'scarce' and more testing is needed. In 2005, the British Cheese Board said that different kinds of cheese can influence dreams based on the group's own research. In an interview with NPR, the board's secretary Nigel White said that although some people had 'wacky' dreams, none of the volunteers who took part in the survey had nightmares. As well as Nielsen, researchers from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton co-authored the study. What drinking 3 cups of coffee daily did to a study group of more than 170,000 people Want stronger coffee with fewer beans? Pour from high up, study says
