“My mornings are fairly consistent, thanks largely to the furry alarm clock that demands breakfast at 7 AM sharp, my cat Cheddar. The last few days, though, I’ve had to add a novel item to my morning ritual: carefully sticking a nickel-sized device onto my underwear so that it can track my farts for the next 21 or so hours. Ah, but don’t worry, it’s all in the name of science. I’ve now had the opportunity — nay, the privilege — to test out the Smart Underwear wearable developed by researchers at the University of Maryland, led by Brantley Hall. Hall and his team are using the device and hundreds of eager volunteers to answer the many enduring questions surrounding our flatulence. What they learn will not only shed light on a vital biological function we rarely discuss in polite company, it could someday help people improve their gut microbiome and health.” | | Word, Excel, and PowerPoint hog all the spotlight, but Visio is the tool that engineers, IT pros, and project managers have quietly relied on for years to make complex systems actually make sense. Flowcharts, network diagrams, org charts, floor plans — 250,000+ shapes and enough templates to turn your most chaotic data into something a human being can read. One payment. No recurring fees. Just Visio, finally getting its moment for only $13/life. [Ad] | | “Psychedelics are getting a renewed boost of interest lately. The FDA recently announced they were fast-tracking research investigating psilocybin, the compound that gives magic mushrooms their magic, as a treatment for depression. Now, new research published in Nature Communications is showing just how powerful a single dose of this psychedelic compound can be. Neuropsychopharmacologists from the University of California, San Francisco recruited 28 physically and mentally healthy people who had never taken psychedelics before and gave them their inaugural magic mushroom trip. But first, they administered a single placebo dose of 1 milligram of the magic mushroom compound. Most of the subjects reported the experience was ‘no more unusual than an everyday state of consciousness,’ which was backed up by EEG readings.” | | “At 19, Tucker Francis was living his dream. … Then, while chaperoning a 2017 snorkel trip in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Francis did one last freedive and disappeared. The boat’s captain found his body 10 meters down an hour later. Investigators later determined that Francis had suffered from a hypoxic blackout, also often called a shallow water blackout: He passed out when his brain couldn’t get enough oxygen — a problem that can come on without warning even among experienced swimmers. Once unconscious, the body sinks and the lungs can fill with water. The grieving Francis family decided to try to do something to reduce the risk of such blackouts among other freedivers.” | | AcePDF Pro gives you lifetime access to a surprisingly powerful document transformer: convert, edit, compress, merge, and split PDFs without wrestling with subscriptions, sketchy free tools, or your coworker who ‘knows a workaround.’ It handles Word, Excel, images, and more, all from one clean interface that doesn’t require a computer science degree to operate. [Ad] | | “If your dog stops mid-walk to chew on a patch of lawn, you’ve probably wondered whether something is wrong. Of the delicious food options available to them, why would they choose leafy, bitter grass? Many owners assume the worst: that the dog has an upset stomach and is eating grass to make itself throw up. Dr. Melissa Bain doesn’t see it that way. ‘My dog enjoys it every day,’ says Bain, a professor of clinical animal behavior at the University of California, Davis. ‘If we ever mow the grass, [he’ll] go out there and just start chomping on it.’ To her, it reads as a snack, not a symptom.” | |
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