Videos:

1. Water Crisis Clip – 19:05* ‘Five-alarm fire’: Arizona water crisis accelerates with tough choices ahead – The Arizona Republic’s Joanna Allhands

Even the CDC recommends this botanical ingredient as comparable to DEET for repelling disease-carrying insects.

While DEET is the gold standard of insect repellents, it is also a strong synthetic chemical with a tarnished reputation. Known to the chemistry set as N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, DEET was potentially linked to cases of brain damage in the 1980s and 90s, inciting a flood of fear amongst consumers that has yet to recede.

BUT, there’s an alternative. Behold oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE), the plant-based active ingredient derived from eucalyptus leaves and approved for efficacy by the CDC.

“Oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE) or PMD (chemical name: para-menthane-3,8-diol), the synthesized version of OLE. Products containing OLE and PMD include, but are not limited to, Repel and Off! Botanicals. This recommendation refers to EPA-registered products containing the active ingredient OLE (or PMD). “Pure” oil of lemon eucalyptus (essential oil not formulated as a repellent) is not recommended; it has not undergone similar, validated testing for safety and efficacy and is not registered with EPA as an insect repellent.”

University of Colorado, June 11, 2022

A handheld device which builds breathing muscles could help older people get in shape. Doing just five minutes of the breath training exercises every day for more than six weeks improved people’s performance on the treadmill by 12 percent, according to scientists. Adults are recommended to log 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week. Now scientists have come up with a simple way of making exercising on the treadmill easier for those struggling to get running.

“Developing novel forms of physical training that increase adherence and improve physical function are key to reducing the risk of chronic diseases with aging,” says lead researcher Kaitlin Freeberg, of the University of Colorado, in a statement. “High-resistance IMST (high-resistance inspiratory muscle strength training) may be one such strategy to promote adherence and improve multiple components of health in midlife and older adults.”

IMST involves inhaling through a handheld device which adds resistance to the breath. A total of 35 adults were divided into two groups, a high resistance training group and a low resistance control group. Participants used a manual breathing trainer for 30 breaths a day, or around five minutes, over a period of six weeks.

Those who were part of the high-resistance group improved their treadmill time by 12 percent, the researchers report. Participants in the high-resistance group also showed a relationship with changes in 18 metabolites tested in the study, “predominantly ones that play key roles in energy production and fatty acid metabolism.”

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, June 8, 2022

Scientists discovered years ago that newborn infants depend upon immune components transferred from their mothers to survive the onslaught of pathogens that begin invading their bodies as soon as they are born. 

Now, a far-reaching study published in Nature, provides a surprising explanation of how those early days of mother-provided immunity actually work–and what that information could mean for preventing death and disability from a wide range of infectious diseases. 

“For many years, scientists believed that antibodies cannot get inside cells. They don’t have the necessary machinery. And so, infections caused by pathogens that live exclusively inside cells were thought to be invisible to antibody-based therapies,” says Sing Sing Way, MD, Ph.D., Division of Infectious Diseases at Cincinnati Children’s. “Our findings show that pregnancy changes the structure of certain sugars attached to the antibodies, which allows them to protect babies from infection by a much wider range of pathogens.” 

“The maternal-infant dyad is so special. It’s the intimate connection between a mother and her baby,” says John Erickson, MD, Ph.D., Division of Neonatology, and first-author of the study.

Erickson continues, “This special connection starts when babies are in the womb and continues after birth. I love seeing the closeness between mothers and their babies in our newborn care units. This discovery paves the way for pioneering new therapies that can specifically target infections in pregnant mothers and newborns babies. I believe these findings also will have far-reaching implications for antibody-based therapies in other fields.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 3, 2022 

As people age, their intestinal stem cells begin to lose their ability to regenerate. These stem cells are the source for all new intestinal cells, so this decline can make it more difficult to recover from gastrointestinal infections or other conditions that affect the intestine.

This age-related loss of stem cell function can be reversed by a 24-hour fast, according to a new study from MIT biologists. The researchers found that fasting dramatically improves stem cells’ ability to regenerate, in both aged and young mice.

In fasting mice, cells begin breaking down fatty acids instead of glucose, a change that stimulates the stem cells to become more regenerative. The researchers found that they could also boost regeneration with a molecule that activates the same metabolic switch. Such an intervention could potentially help older people recovering from GI infections or cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, the researchers say.

“This study provided evidence that fasting induces a metabolic switch in the intestinal stem cells, from utilizing carbohydrates to burning fat,” Sabatini says. “Interestingly, switching these cells to fatty acid oxidation enhanced their function significantly. Pharmacological targeting of this pathway may provide a therapeutic opportunity to improve tissue homeostasis in age-associated pathologies.”

After mice fasted for 24 hours, the researchers removed intestinal stem cells and grew them in a culture dish, allowing them to determine whether the cells can give rise to “mini-intestines” known as organoids.

The researchers found that stem cells from the fasting mice doubled their regenerative capacity.