#microbiom

[probablymoons]

its so so important to follow blogs that will put a bit of softcore porn on ur dash. it is not only tasteful but also a key part of the microbiome

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I'm working on clearing out some old tabs, and ran across this piece from last fall. The short version is that your gut microbiome and other microbes that accompany you in a series of symbiotic relationships throughout your lifetime persist even after you die. While you might assume that these bacteria and other little beings would perish along with you once you're no longer warm and living, it turns out that they shift gears upon your death, being part of the massive effort to return your remains en masse to the nutrient cycle.

There's honestly something rather poetic about that. Here you've spent a lifetime being the center of a holobiont--a sort of miniature, migratory ecosystem. And these many millions of life forms that you have given safe harbor to for thousands upon thousands of their generations are among the funerary vanguard caring for your remains after you're gone. They pour forth from their ancestral lands--the gut, the skin, and other discrete places--and spread out through even the most protected regions of your form.

And then, just as you constructed your body, molecule by molecule, from a lifetime of nutrients you consumed, so do these microbes go through the process of returning everything you borrowed back to the wider cycles of food and growth and life and death. The ancient halls where their ancestors lived in relative stability are now taken apart in the open air, and their descendants will disperse their inheritance into the soil and the water through the perpetual process of decomposition.

I've always wanted a green burial, and I find it comforting that when my remains are laid in the ground, they'll be accompanied by the tiny ecosystems I spent a lifetime tending, and who will return the favor by sending my molecules off in a billion new directions.

[mindblowingscience]

Playing through the greenery and litter of a mini forest's undergrowth for just one month may be enough to change a child's immune system, according to an experiment in Finland. When daycare workers rolled out a lawn, planted forest undergrowth (such as dwarf heather and blueberries), and allowed children to care for crops in planter boxes, the diversity of microbes in the guts and on the skin of the young kids appeared healthier in a very short space of time. Compared to other city kids who play in standard urban daycares with yards of pavement, tile, and gravel, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds at these greened-up daycare centers in Finland showed increased T-cells and other important immune markers in their blood within 28 days.

Continue Reading.

[smartfoodsolutions-org]

Exploring the Wonders of Probiotics

How They Work and Benefit Our Health

Probiotics, often referred to as “good bacteria,” have gained increasing recognition for their potential to promote health and well-being. These microorganisms, primarily found in certain foods and supplements, play a crucial role in maintaining a balanced and harmonious gut microbiome. This essay delves into the fascinating world of probiotics, elucidating their mechanisms of action and the…

[sierraveree-art]

my illustration for the naming of the year!

[nyaa]

August 25, 2008 by mocha

[vilevexedvixen]

In light of the conservative philosophy that "cuts = efficiency", consider:

A skeleton is not a more "efficient" body.

All other parts are needed for it to function.

Even "foreign bodies" live in symbiosis to form the flora on our skin and in our guts. Protecting us from infection and helping us better digest food. They are part of the body.

Even just bone and muscle is not enough when the means to sustain our energy needs are stripped out.

Reduction is not efficiency.

[ethersierra]

what would happen if we just. dressed as bees at the mbmbam liveshows. Twenty Honey Hive: Travis was right

[cybercity-sunrise]

Microbiology is such a beautiful field. I haven't always seen it that way. Microbes can be gross and working with them can be difficult. Being invisible to the naked eye, the beauty of microbes and their complex functions in the world are easy to overlook.

But y'all, microbes are the connective tissue of life on earth. They are everywhere. I work with anaerobes, which at first might seem more obscure than aerobic microbes considering the prevalence of oxygen on our planet. The reality is there is an anaerobic world within our aerobic one--the soil, our bodies, inside plants and animals, in the ocean. Many microbes that live in anaerobic soils are also found in the human gut. Microbes can make our crops more nutritious, our soils more fertile, our bodies more regulated.

Our gut microbiome is essential to our health. It isn't just this inert mass inside of us, rather it modulates immune responses, mood, digestion, inflammation, and more. We pass our microbiomes onto our babies. It's an incredibly intimate and dynamic relationship, with macroorganisms and microbiomes affecting each other in turn.

There's so much else I could say, but I'll cut myself off here. But please--even though biofilms are slimy and weird, even though nobody is thrilled when groceries go bad--give a little love to the organisms that can do virtually any metabolic process in virtually any environment and make up the foundation for all other life on our planet.

[erose-this-name]

humans are not the default race

In every scifi and fantasy setting with """races""", humans are the default.

If you're lucky, we're the short-lived, fast-reproducing pests that are all white Europeans for some mysterious reason, and also have disproportionate rates of being raised as undead because we can't be bothered to make zombie dwarf minis or animate a vampire gnome that has to jump up to bite a tall person's neck.

(We've got BOTH human AND elf skeleton warriors! Oh, hey, I just changed the scale, now it's a hobbit skeleton OR a giant skeleton! Such skeleton diversity! No, Khajiits can't be bone boys, a skeleton with a tail and a cat skull is just TOO SPOOKY)

I feel like a lot of people don't realize that we (Homo sapiens) have the longest running endurance of any land animal. Being able to run a marathon is not normal.

(It's because we evolved the very unusual hunting strategy of Slowly Chasing Gazelles While Throwing Sticks At Them Until The Gazelle Collapses From Exhaustion Then Casually Walking Up And Bashing Their Head In With A Rock™).

Even Neanderthals probably couldn't match our tenacity (they were considerably stronger and tougher though, but by no means dumber judging from the size of their brain cavities{which was bigger than ours actually})

(the evolutionary Neanderthal hunting strategy was probably something like Jumping Out And Stabbing A Wooly Rhinoceros With A Pointed Stick, Then Getting Punted 12 Feet Into a Tree But Getting Right Back Up And Doing It Again Until It Dies Because You Have Superhuman Bone And Muscle Density. And If You Do Break One Of Your Unbreakable Bones Your Homies Will Take Care Of You Until It Heals™

[Neanderthal skeletons are found with healed fractures surprisingly often despite said bones being much stronger and denser than ours, they just kept evolving denser bones until they couldn't even swim without sinking like a rock, but they still got broken all the time])

So given that we, Homo sapiens, actually literally used to be the "species that specializes in sheer endurance, determination, and unbreakable fucking will", I want more fantasy and scifi settings where we are that way! I think the only setting where that's even remotely the case is Undertale. We're not just the "default" intelligent species!

The only reason we're good at everything is because we can make complex tools and can learn and aren't bound by instinct. Which, by definition, all fantasy races would also be able to do. Otherwise, they'd just be considered animals. Like trolls or Redditers.

The "default" species should just be really good at making tools and quickly adapting, but kinda suck in every other category. So I guess gnomes or goblins are the default d&d race.

And Humans are certainly not the Tolkien "that one race that lives short lives and reproduces faster than everyone else and is good at farming" because:

A) we actually do already live relatively long lives for mammals of our size and also GIVING BIRTH CAN KILL US, AND IF OUR PARENTS DON'T RAISE US JUST RIGHT THAT CAN ALSO KILL US, WE ARE SPECIFICALLY VERY BAD AT REPRODUCING

B) we are in no way adapted to farming, and most of our modern health and societal issues stem from the fact that we aren't meant to farm or be civilized, but do it anyways.

We only farm because it helped us survive the ecological collapse at the end of the ice age, now we're in too deep to go back.

When the ice age ended (quite abruptly) the ecosystem couldn't provide for hunters and gathers anymore, a bunch of things were getting heat stroke, sea levels rose, hibernation and bloom cycles and reptile gender ratios were out of wack, predators died out because herbivores died out because plants weren't doing well. Decomposers like vultures and worms had a field day (Until they didn't [RIP condor population]). It would take a while for a new ecological equilibrium to emerge and for evolution to fix things.

But farming doesn't need any healthy ecosystems except for the soil and pollinators, mostly, so that still works. And farming makes more food meaning you can have more people. So now there's more people.

But that also means you can't ever go back to foraging without all those extra people dying of starvation. So, anarcho-primitivism would technically be the most deadly ideology if implemented, and therefore is not based, unfortunately. Here's hoping for an apocalypse to do that for us! (I would not survive it)

Fun Fact: those isolated tribal societies like the Sentinelese that still do hunting and gathering only spend 15-20 hours a week doing that and another 20 doing camp chores, and the rest of their time forming meaningful relationships and not being depressed.

Notice how most of what they do as "work" (hunting, fighting, hiking, berry/mushroom/etc picking, cooking, camping, arts and crafts, oral history/story telling) are things that we need to do during our limited free time as "hobbies" just so that our "work" doesn't drive us insane. Thus leaving less time for relationships, etc.

If we were actually good at farming or industry or civilization, then things like math and repetitive manual labor wouldn't be work. They'd be the most fun activities.

Sure, these foragers die young, but so did medieval peasant farmers who were even less healthy since they had much less diverse diets (a lot of carbs) and got plague more often thanks to cities and their close proximity to livestock. Our modern sedentary lifestyle is bad too.

Hobbits are suited to farming (also Entwives I guess). Hobbits are quite good at it, at the cost of not being as good at much else (besides going unnoticed and throwing for some reason), they inherently enjoy farming life quite a bit and most* aren't haunted by the sense they should be anything else, like we are. *(The Took family got that Call To Adventure 'tism)

We only think that we're not special or can't be anything other than what we currently are because we no longer have anything else to compare ourselves to. The Neanderthals and Denisovans died out tens of thousands of years ago and the fucking aliens are somewhere, presumably

We are special, only we survived.

But at the cost of becoming the species equivalent of an abandoned child raised by wolves. We fantasize about these things because we all know that we shouldn't be alone. But our perceptions of ourselves are twisted by our trauma and lack of socialization.

Personally, the realization that having lost our family was probably our fault makes that hurt so much worse.

[eretzyisrael]

Good News From Israel

Israel's Good News Newsletter to 2nd Feb 2025

In the 2nd Feb 25 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

An Israeli university offers full scholarships to freed Gaza hostages.

An Israeli life-support system is being deployed to US hospitals.

The Head of Hadassah hospital saved a passenger on an El Al flight.

Israeli organizations saved lives in Las Angeles and Georgia.

See how cows are milked on an autonomous Israeli dairy farm.

Israeli tech will protect India and its trains.

You can behave like an animal at a new Israeli zoo.

Buy a home in Israel – while you can.

Read More: Good News From Israel

The portions of the Torah read in most synagogues during the last two weeks included the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and its disastrous consequences for Egypt. In contrast there have been many recent heartening and enheartening events and activities in Israel which are strengthening the nation and benefiting the world.

Medical news includes the US launch of a unique Israeli respiratory system to boost the heart's function of oxygenating the blood in life-support patients. Read how Israeli charity Belev Echad ("One Heart") helps rehabilitate wounded IDF soldiers. The AI system of Israeli emergency NGO United Hatzalah sent its EMTs to a shopping mall to treat a heart attack patient that it had predicted would need saving. And it certainly was a heart-stopping moment when an El Al passenger had a heart attack and was saved thanks to the Head of Hadassah hospital being on the flight.

There have been many enheartening stories in the last week, not least that of released hostages being reunited with their loved ones. The sight of Israeli SmartAID volunteers restoring power to dialysis patients in Los Angeles. New housing for Israeli lone soldiers. Free scholarships for ex-hostages at Israeli Universities. And the Swedish Member of the European Parliament who fights anti-Zionism. 

Finally, thanks to the generous hearts of Australians who made cases for mezuzahs that will be fixed to the doors of residents of Israel returning to their rebuilt homes. And we hope that the heart of 101-year-old Walter Bingham, the world's oldest journalist, will keep beating until he reaches 120.

The photo is of early spring roses emerging on top of Netanya's "Wall of Hearts".

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I'm fascinated by microbiomes, the communities of bacteria, unicellular fungi, and other tiny living beings that populate various parts of animal bodies. We literally can't function without them; our gut micriobiome, for example, is crucial to our ability to digest food.

It's long been thought that the brain was kept sterile by the blood-brain barrier. However, this recent study shows that fish have a brain microbiome, so it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility we might, too. It's tough to study, because accessing the brain opens up the risk of outside contamination confounding the results of the study.

But if it is true, the implications could be huge. There's already a growing body of evidence that our gut microbiome has a significant impact on our mental health and mood through what's known as the Gut-Brain Axis. This is a series of connections between these parts of the body that includes the nervous, endocrine, immune, and other systems. Given there's about one microbial cell for every human cell in our bodies, it wouldn't be at all surprising that our microbial communities have a bigger influence on our lives than we think.

Because it's quite dangerous to study a living human brain, it will be difficult to determine whether we do have cranial microbiomes. But I'll be keeping my eye out for any further news along these lines.

[papillondusublime]

Fun fact: obelisks, a new life form discovered in 2024, are viroid-like elements made of entirely novel RNA sequences. They are a distinct phylogenetic group, however scientists have yet to find a shared ancestry with another life form. Obelisks appeared in about 10% of the human microbiome examined by the Stanford University team, but their genetic sequences are very small, which might be the reason why we didn't notice them before.

[reasonsforhope]

"A company in France has developed genetically-enhanced houseplants that remove 30 times more indoor air pollutants than your normal ficus.

Paint, treated wood, household cleaners, insulation, unseen mold—there is a shopping list of things that can fill the air you breathe in your home with VOCs or volatile organic compounds. These include formaldehyde and other airborne substances that can cause inflammation and irritation in the body.

The best way to tackle this little-discussed private health problem is by keeping good outdoor airflow into your living spaces, but in the dog days of summer or the depths of a Maine winter, that might not be possible.

Houseplants can remove these pollutants from the air, and so the company Neoplants decided to make simple alterations to these species’ genetic makeup to supercharge this cleaning ability.

In particular, houseplants’ natural ability to absorb pollutants like formaldehyde relies on them storing them as toxins to be excreted later.

French scientists and Neoplants’ co-founders Lionel Mora and Patrick Torbey engineered a houseplant to convert them instead to plant matter. They also took aim at the natural microbiome of houseplants to enhance their ability to absorb and process VOCs as well.

The company’s first offering—the Neo P1—is a Devil’s ivy plant that sits on a custom-designed tall stand that both maximizes its air-cleaning properties and allows it to be watered far less often.

Initial testing, conducted by the Ecole Mines-Telecom of Lille University, shows that if you do choose to shell out the $179 for the Neo P1, it’s as if you were buying 30 houseplants. Of course, if you went for the budget route of 30 houseplants, you’d have to water them all.

The founders pointed out in an interview done with Forbes last year that once they settled on the species and fixed the winning genetic phenotype, the next part of the process was just raising plants, the same activity done in every nursery and florist in every town in Europe."

Deliveries for the P1 are estimated for August 2024.

-via Good News Network, November 6, 2023

--

Note: I'm not a plant biologist, but if this works the way the company's white paper says it does, holy genetic engineering, Batman.

(Would love to hear thoughts from anyone who is a plant biologist or other relevant field!)

[mindblowingscience]

What's good for your aging gut may also be good for your aging brain. The first study of its kind in twins has found that taking daily protein and prebiotic supplements can improve scores on memory tests in people over the age of 60. The findings are food for thought, especially as the same visual memory and learning test is used to detect early signs of Alzheimer's disease. The double-blinded trial involved two cheap plant fiber prebiotics that are available over the counter in numerous nations around the world. Prebiotics are non-digestible consumables that help stimulate our gut microbes.

Continue Reading.

[sci-vi]

Considering that there's evidence indicating that early infancy adoption can change the composition of the gut microbiome, what do we think the impact is on Clark's?

Due to diet, and where he grew up, if he could maintain them, he's probably harbouring a pretty standard human microbiome.

Or alternatively, he's carrying around microbes that no human possibly can, because weird ones can make their home where previously there were foreign (to Earth) forms of single-celled organisms. Thus he poses a slight risk to human lovers as he can drastically alter their microbiome. Also curious if there would be health impacts due to him lacking (if Kryptonians even have a microbiome) necessary xenobacteria that are normally present, only he doesn't notice because he gets juiced by the sun.