Stephan: This looks like it may be the first report on a new and exciting medical breakthrough.
Paralyzed mouse walks again just two weeks after therapy
German researchers have enabled mice paralyzed after spinal cord injuries to walk again, re-establishing a neural link hitherto considered irreparable in mammals by using a designer protein injected into the brain.
Spinal cord injuries in humans, often caused by sports or traffic accidents, leave them paralyzed because not all of the nerve fibers that carry information between muscles and the brain are able to grow back.
But the researchers from Ruhr University Bochum managed to stimulate the paralyzed mice’s nerve cells to regenerate using a designer protein.
“The special thing about our study is that the protein is not only used to stimulate those nerve cells that produce it themselves, but that it is also carried further (through the brain),” the team’s head Dietmar Fischer told Reuters in an interview.
“In this way, with a relatively small intervention, we stimulate a very large number of nerves to regenerate and that is ultimately the reason why the mice can walk again.”
The paralyzed rodents that received the treatment started walking after two to three weeks, he said.
Stephan: There was no SR on Sunday, and Monday's edition will be available on the SR website, Facebook, Linked-in, and Twitter, but it will not be mailed out to subscribers. We are having problems with MailChimp the distribution service we have been using to send out the subscriber edition. They have no human customer service on the weekends, so it will await Monday to see if we can resolve this, or move to another distribution service. One way or another we should have this sorted out by Tuesday.
Stephan: I have been telling my readers for years this was coming, so the information itself will be familiar. I am running this piece to show that as time goes on the certainty of these changes becomes ever stronger. I urge my readers to check the numerous maps projecting temperature and sea rise changes in your area, look at the dates when these things will occur, and plan accordingly.
Greenhouse gas emissions play a significant role in climate change, as it traps heat radiating from the sun. Fellow researcher James Randerson said the effects of this will be felt “faster” in certain areas, including Asia. “In Asia, projected reductions in aerosol emissions, glacier melting in the Himalayas and loss of snow cover in northern areas brought on by climate change will cause the atmosphere to heat up faster than in other regions,” Randerson said. “We know that the rain belt shifts toward this heating, and that its northward movement in the Eastern Hemisphere is consistent with these expected impacts of climate change.” The researchers have said that with this information, the next step is to figure out more specifically how these changes will impact natural disasters, infrastructure and ecosystems, and what changes need to be made to policy and management
By 2100, billions of people are at risk of facing more flooding, higher temperatures and less food and water. A new study published in “Nature Climate Change” found that the climate change will cause the Earth’s tropical rain […]
Damian Carrington, Environment Editor - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is the latest on the world's conversion out of the carbon energy era. It is happening, more slowly in the U.S. because of the legalized bribery made possible by Citizens' United. But, even in the U.S., it is happening, and I consider that very good news.
In a poll of electric car owners, 91% said they would not want to return to petrol. Credit: David Gee/Alamy
Electric vehicles are close to the “tipping point” of rapid mass adoption thanks to the plummeting cost of batteries, experts say.
Global sales rose 43% in 2020, but even faster growth is anticipated when continuing falls in battery prices bring the price of electric cars dipping below that of equivalent petrol and diesel models, even without subsidies. The latest analyses forecast that to happen some time between 2023 and 2025.
The tipping point has already been passed in Norway, where tax breaks mean electric cars are cheaper. The market share of battery-powered cars soared to 54% in 2020 in the Nordic country, compared with less than 5% in most European nations.
Transport is a major source of carbon emissions and electric cars are vital in efforts to fight the climate crisis. But, while they are already cheaper to run, their higher purchase price is a barrier to mass uptake. The other key factor is “range anxiety”, but this week the first factory production began of batteries capable of giving a 200-mile charge […]
Stephan: In 1968 biologist Paul Ehrlich freaked the world out with his book The Population Bomb which argued that humanity faced a catastrophic crisis as a result of over-population and growing shortages of raw material supplies which would lead to grave economic consequences as prices for those materials went up. Ehrlich added, "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
For over a decade Ehrlich made an international reputation proclaiming this, appearing on Johnny Carson nighttime show 20 times. Then in 1980, an economist, Julian Simon, who had had enough of Ehrlich's prophesies challenged him to a bet. Simon wanted something that could be objectively verified, and he proposed to Ehrlich that he pick five commodities whose prices he was willing to bet would go up and they settled on the price of five metals — copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten, and whether in a decade the prices would go up as Ehrlich predicted.
Enrlich lost the best, and in October 1990, Simon was going through his mail and found an envelope from California. Inside was a check from Paul Ehrlich for $576.07. There was no note.
As to the Ehrlich's population claims, yes the population is going up, but most developed nations do not actually have sustainable birthrates, 2.3 births for each death. Here is the latest on this trend.
Human populations are set to decline in countries from Asia to Europe – and an unusual form of rewilding is taking place.
The village of Selas near Molina de Aragon, part of a vast region of central eastern Spain that is one of the least populated areas in Europe. Credit: David Ramos/Getty
For many years it seemed that overpopulation was the looming crisis of our age. Back in 1968, the Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich infamously predicted that millions would soon starve to death in their bestselling, doom-saying book The Population Bomb; since then, neo-Malthusian rumblings of an imminent disaster have been a continual refrain in certain sections of the environmental movement – fears that were recently given voice on David Attenborough’s documentary Life on our Planet.
At the time the Ehrlichs were publishing their dark prophecies, the world was at its peak of population growth, which at that point was increasing at a rate of 2.1% a year. Since then, the global population has ballooned from 3.5 billion to 7.67 billion.
But growth has slowed – and considerably. As women’s empowerment advances, and access to contraception […]
