My Chromecast plugged into my old TV. Business Insider
A $35 Chromecast device revived an old TV I was planning to give away.
The small device allows you to stream on your TV from a phone, tablet, or laptop. It plugs into your TV via the HDMI port and works with all major streaming apps, like HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and, YouTube.
Chromecasts can also work with older smart TVs that are on the verge of becoming obsolete.
In the era of smart TVs and streaming devices, it’s hard to remember a time when not everything had an instant connection to Netflix.
But as little as five years ago, most of us were buying regular old TVs, without the built-in smarts.
I got a 32-inch Sony TV as a Christmas gift in 2014, right before I moved into my first solo apartment. It was perfect for my needs at the time: it fit on my mantle, it had an HDMI port that allowed me to connect my laptop to play movies once in a while, and it sounded pretty good in my small, one-bedroom place.
But by 2019, I had mostly worn out the speakers — I had to crank the volume nearly all the way up in order to hear something — and the size felt too small to properly enjoy movies or football games. My fiancé and I decided it was time to upgrade: we purchased a Vizio smart TV (a steal at less than $250) and hooked it up to an Apple TV.
At this point, I was ready to hand off my old TV to any friend who wanted it, or put it by the curb and hope it ended up in a good home. But then I remembered I had an extra Chromecast dongle lying around — the perks of being a former tech reviewer — and decided to give it a shot.
For the unfamiliar, a Chromecast allows you to stream on your TV from a phone, tablet, or laptop. It plugs into your TV via the HDMI port and works with all major streaming apps, like HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and, of course, YouTube. All you have to do is open the app on your iPhone or Android device, select what you’d like to watch, and then tap the cast button — your content will then appear on the TV screen as you control it from your phone.
This isn’t new technology by any means; Chromecast has been on the market since 2013. But I’d argue that the device is even more useful now than it’s ever been for three reasons:
We’re all more used to using our phones for streaming, and many of us watch shows or movies on our smartphones anyway.
There are more streaming apps than ever before, but not all of them workon every device, like older smart TVs. Most of them are available on smartphones, however.
A $35 dongle is significantly cheaper than buying a new smart TV, or even a more sophisticated streaming device like an Apple TV, which will cost you up to $200.
And I can now vouch for its usefulness myself: adding a Chromecast to my older TV has completely transformed it from an item I planned to give away into a newly smart TV and a permanent fixture in my bedroom. I can stream whatever I want as long as I have the app on my phone and it’s compatible with Chromecast, and the worn out speakers aren’t really a problem in the more confined space.
(It’s worth noting that Google isn’t the only one doing this: Amazon and Roku make cheap streaming sticks as well, I just happen to prefer Google devices in my home.)
Chromecast is only about two inches in diameter and tucks neatly behind your TV. Philip Barker/Future via Getty Images
Chromecast does come with a few challenges and limitations. It won’t be compatible with every site or app you’d like to stream from, so if you watch shows and movies from some niche apps, it may not work (The device does have a lot of partners, though, so it’s worth checking Google’s partner list before you buy one.) It’s also worth noting that those looking to watch unofficial streams will be out of luck, as only official content is supported.
Additionally, the physical act of controlling what you’re watching from your phone can be a little wonky. Anytime I need to pause and restart something, or change the volume from my phone, it can be a bit glitchy, as if my phone forgot it was in charge of the stream. It’s not a deal-breaker, but I wouldn’t recommend Chromecast as the streaming conduit on your main TV for this reason — it will probably end up annoying you.
Flaws aside, however, for $35, you’re getting your money’s worth. And as my colleague Tony Villas-Boas points out, this isn’t only a solution for old, “dumb” TVs — adding a cheap streaming dongle to a smart TV can help circumvent older systems that don’t support your favorite apps.
Green traffic lights for traffic signal priority for buses. (Shutterstock)
TransLink 2019 is Daily Hive’s seven-part, end-of-year series with Kevin Desmond, the public transit authority’s CEO, on the state and future of Metro Vancouver’s public transit system.
Part 5 discusses TransLink’s ongoing pursuit of speeding up its buses to improve passenger experience, increase ridership, and bring operating costs down.
Moving forward, TransLink intends to take bus priority measures for its RapidBus program much further, with the implementation of traffic signal priority at strategic locations through the cooperation of municipal governments.
A prime example of traffic signal priority for buses in the region is the 2011-installed bus-only signal at the intersection of Marine Drive and Taylor Way in West Vancouver, which has considerably sped up buses past traffic congestion in conjunction with the bus-only lanes.
“For the next round of the RapidBus program, I want to take it a step up with traffic signal priority where we can get extended green time or maybe even signal preemption at key intersections, but you need the buy-in from the city traffic engineers to do that,” said TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond in an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized.
“We can bring the money through the expansion program and say look, ‘we’ll bear the financial risk, but you need to bear the kind of traffic engineering risk, where we can make it work for your city and transit riders.’”
He says the established RapidBus model can also be used for the public transit authority’s continued conversations with municipal governments for improving the speed and reliability of regular buses as well.
For passengers, slowing bus service has resulted in longer and less reliable travel times, as well as longer waits and increased overcrowding from bus bunching.
For the public transit authority, slower bus speeds have led to a $75-million increase in operating costs from the need to schedule in more buses and drivers to meet the established route frequencies. This cost is equivalent to about 700,000 annual bus service hours or 12% of the annual operating costs of the bus fleet.
Desmond is pushing to get these costs on existing services down so that TransLink can redirect more of its resources towards service expansion.
“We could invest a lot of our dollars on infrastructure for priority, and if you are speeding up the buses by 20% that’s money back in our pocket,” he said. “You are saving buses and operating hours, which we can either redistribute to other needs or put more buses on that corridor. So it really becomes a virtuous circle.”
In the meantime, the forthcoming results of the first phase of the RapidBus program will lay the foundation for new ways TransLink can create a well-defined layered bus network, ranging from the community shuttles, regular buses, B-Line (the 99 B-Line will remain for now), suburban express buses, and RapidBus.
Beginning January 6, the R4 41st Avenue will run between UBC and the Expo Line’s Joyce-Collingwood Station, and the R3 Lougheed Highway will run between the Millennium Line’s Coquitlam Central Station and Maple Ridge. Two existing B-Lines will also be converted into the RapidBus brand, with the 95 B-Line on Hastings Street from the Expo Line’s Burrard Station to SFU Burnaby Mountain converted into the R5 Hastings Street, and the 96 B-Line from Guildford Exchange to Newton Exchange converted into the R1 King George Boulevard.
Then sometime between February and April, the R2 Marine Drive on the North Shore, running between Park Royal and Phibbs Exchange with a connection to Lonsdale SeaBus terminal and bus exchange, will launch.
TransLink has plans to roll out at least two additional new RapidBus routes in 2021, including a service from the Canada Line’s Richmond-Brighouse Station to the Expo Line’s Metrotown Station via the Knight Street Bridge, and a service from the Expo Line’s Scott Road Station to Newton Exchange via Scott Road and 72 Avenue.
Other potential RapidBus routes further down the pipeline in the 2020s entail:
Lions Gate RapidBus: from downtown Vancouver to North Vancouver’s Lynn Valley neighbourhood via the Lions Gate Bridge
Commercial-Victoria Drive RapidBus: from downtown Vancouver to Marine Drive in South Vancouver via Hasting Street, Commercial Drive, and Victoria Drive
Ironworkers-Willingdon RapidBus: from Phibbs Exchange to the Millennium Line’s Brentwood Station and Expo Line’s Metrotown Station via the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge and Willingdon Avenue
White Rock RapidBus: from Newton Exchange to White Rock via King George Boulevard
Coquitlam-Langley RapidBus: from the Millennium Line’s Coquitlam Central Station to Langley Centre via Lougheed Highway, Golden Ears Bridge, and 200 Street
Over the past two decades, arterial express routes have been the precursor to new rail rapid transit lines.
For instance, the Millennium Line replaced a long section of the 99 B-Line that used to run beyond Commercial-Broadway Station and all the way to Lougheed Town Centre, and the recent Evergreen Extension replaced the 97 B-Line from Lougheed Town Centre to Coquitlam Centre.
The Canada Line was also the replacement for the 98 B-Line that operated on Granville Street and No. 3 Road between Waterfront Station and Richmond Centre.
You know those moments when everything just flows? You’re in the conference room brainstorming with your team and you can just feel the energy, the cohesion. Or you’re writing your book and it’s just pouring out of you, the words an effortless stream of brilliance.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have more of those moments in 2020?
Imagine there was something you could do daily that would simultaneously:
• Build your core strength
• Release stress and tension
• Enhance whole-brain thinking (get your left and right hemispheres to work together)
• Calm your mind
• Energize your body
Now imagine it only took a few minutes to do, and you could do it anywhere.
There is. It’s called the cross-crawl, and it’s for real.
Neuroscientists have long known that cross-body movements help the left and right hemispheres of your brain to connect and coordinate. This is important because the more your hemispheres connect, the more optimally you perform on any given task.
The cross-crawl is simply a form of cross-lateral body movements–movements where you use opposition, like crawling, walking, or swimming. The magic comes from using opposite sides of the body to work together (i.e. coordinating the right arm and left leg, then left arm and right leg).
Performing the cross-crawl strengthens the bridge between the right and left hemispheres of your brain, which allows electrical impulses and information to pass freely between the two. This helps with not only physical coordination, but thinking-based activities like learning a language, reading, and focusing.
According to neurophysiologist Dr. Carla Hannaford, “Cross-lateral movements, like a baby’s crawling, activate both hemispheres [of the brain] in a balanced way … When both eyes, both ears, both hands and feet are being used equally, the corpus callosum orchestrating these processes between the two hemispheres becomes more highly developed.”
This can have a major impact.
In her book, Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head, Dr. Hannaford tells the story of Todd, a 16-year-old who, despite tremendous effort on the part of both himself and his parents, still couldn’t read.
This was, as you might imagine, a huge problem. He wouldn’t be able to graduate from high school if he couldn’t read. He wouldn’t be able to attend college or hold any number of jobs. His life would be, in many ways, compromised.
Fortunately, he and his parents were told about cross-lateral movements. The whole family started doing the cross-crawl with Todd, daily. They did it twice–once in the morning, before leaving for school (and work); and once in the evening, before bed.
Six weeks later, Todd was reading.
At grade level.
We tend to think about our physical bodies and mental capacity as two completely separate entities. But they’re not; they’re intimately linked. Our biology is our life. Our life is our biology. And by changing one, we can change the other.
According to Dr. Hannaford, the reason the transformation was so quick for Todd was that he, in fact, already had everything he needed in his brain–the two hemispheres just weren’t communicating. By doing the cross-crawl, he stimulated the corpus callosum, linked the two hemispheres, and got them connected.
As an adult, you can use the cross-crawl for a number of different things. Because it’s both calming and energizing, you can use it to both discharge energy (as in, after a stressful meeting); or recharge your energy (before a big presentation).
It’s one of the quickest and easiest ways to stimulate your brain development and stabilize your nervous system. Basically, whenever you do it, you’re reintegrating your brain and nervous system; it’s like a little reboot for your bodymind.
So how do you do this magical exercise?
An easy way is to do a sort of elaborate march. You stand with your feet apart and arms all the way out (parallel to the ground). Shift your weight to your left foot, lift your right knee and touch it with your left hand. Go back to both feet and immediately shift to the other side. Repeat in an upbeat, rhythmic way–you can even do it to music. Breathe fully. (A simple video if you’d rather see it.)
Do this for 1-2 minutes at a time (or ~30 reps), but not so long that you fully tire out your muscles. You’re not looking for full muscle fatigue, just stimulation.
For those interested in more cross-lateral movements for kids (especially for those who struggle with focus issues), there are several more here.
As an adult in the modern world, you are daily bombarded by a multiplicity of stimuli. Coworkers ping you on Slack while you get texts about your friend’s upcoming birthday dinner (for which you still need a gift), plus Venmo notifications for ramen last night and an email about whether you want to split a hotel room for that conference next month.
You need reliable, easy, and effective strategies for not only managing stress, but reliably getting to peak performance. You need to be able to turn it on when you need to turn it on.
Heading into an important meeting? Do the cross-crawl.
Frustrated with a project or coworker? Do the cross-crawl.
Stuck on that one part of the deck that just doesn’t seem to be coming together? Do the cross-crawl.
Doing the cross-crawl throughout the day is one of the best self-care activities and leadership exercises you can do. It’s free, easy, and fast. Build it into your daily schedule. Teach it to your staff. Better yet, do it with your staff.
We take a look at what to expect for intelligent abodes in the coming year
By John Elliot
Photo Composite: Getty Images / LG
As we come hurtling toward the end of another year and the start of a new decade, we’re taking a look ahead at what 2020 might hold for the smart home.
An Ocean of Streams
Photo: Westinghouse Electronics
2020 will be the year of streaming. While services like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video have been around for years, steadily improving the streaming experience and amassing their own catalogs of original content, 2020 is the year when the more traditional film and television creators—as well as tech companies, like Apple—are embracing the medium and are launching their own dedicated streaming platforms.
Already we’ve seen the launch of Disney+ (and Baby Yoda) and AppleTV+, with HBO Max and Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, on the horizon. There will even be a phone-only streaming service, Quibi, offering short-form content (“quick bites”), meant to be viewed during your free moments throughout the day.
And these won’t be the last. While some services bundle multiple channels (HBO Max, for example, includes WarnerMedia properties like CNN, Adult Swim, TNT and more) or pool content along genre lines (Shudder is a streaming service dedicated to horror), the proliferation of streaming services will continue unabated for the near future.
The rapid expansion of streaming will have a natural knock-on effect on the smart home. Expect some internet connectivity to come standard on all televisions moving forward—at the bare minimum an operating system that allows for streaming apps or a web browser that would allow users to access streaming services’ online portals. More likely, though, the televisions of the future will see many smart integrations as standard features.
If it becomes necessary for your television to be connected—and it is looking that way—then developers will likely make sure your TV can also control your lights, your locks, your laundry machines and even call your entire contact list. There’s a real possibility that your 65-inch flatscreen could become the remote control for your smart home.
But your flatscreen won’t be your only screen. Between your phone, tablet, smart speaker-with-screen and even your screen-outfitted refrigerator, the rise of streaming will emphasize the importance of synchronicity. While it will likely be a software solution (meaning: in-streaming app), look for developers to make it easy as possible to switch across devices—and across brands—to pick up exactly where you left off with what you were streaming.
The appeal to the streaming consumer is apparent—the programming that you want to watch, when you want to watch it and on the specific device you want to watch it on. But there are plenty of upsides to the streaming provider as well. Locking subscribers into monthly payment models (the price of which can be elevated over time), slowly eroding the secondary sale market and elevating new subscriptions via exclusives.
But what about the consumer who has already spent years amassing media, both digitally and physically? Does the dominance of streaming mean you’ll need to purchase HBO Max if you want to watch he “The Sopranos” on your tablet? Not necessarily.
Look for the popularity of Plex, and similar services, to increase in the coming years. What is Plex? Quite simply, it’s your own personal Netflix. Plex software allows users to turn a connected machine (laptop, desktop; Mac mini is a popular option) into a server for the user’s digital content. Own the entire “Alien” series? Host it on your Plex server and then access it through the Plex app on the device of your choice—be it phone, tablet, computer or television. Physical media—DVDs, Blu-rays—can also be ripped (via other software) and hosted on Plex, meaning you won’t have to pay a monthly fee to enjoy your favorite films and TV shows at anytime and from anywhere.
The A.I. Assistant as the Platform Equalizer
The ceaseless expansion of smart home devices shows no signs of slowing down, and while in an ideal world, for both consumers and producers, everyone would stick within a specific smart gadget ecosystem, life is a bit more complicated. Brand loyalty exists for clothing and sports cars, but not for smart devices, and intelligent abodes are filled with products from a variety of producers.
So how do you easily control all your different devices and have them work with each other? Perhaps it will be your smart TV. Perhaps, if you’re really dedicated to the idea of a control panel, it will be a specific smart home hub like Brilliant Control. But much more likely, it will be the A.I. assistant that lives in your pocket—because it lives in many more places than your pocket now.
Google Assistant, Google
Be it Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant, many of the latest smart home devices are being built with an assistant inside or with the ability to communicate directly with them, making these automated intelligences invaluable tools when controlling a home of disparate brands. This phone-bound buddies offer consumers the path of least resistance for a quick and intuitive way to drive their devices, which is why they should continue to flourish as the cross-platform remote controls of choice.
Wireless Isn’t Just for Internet Access
For years, cord management has been the bane of homeowners. The wide variety of charging cables required to power our devices can leave countertops, floors and nearly every outlet-adjacent space as a tangle of cords. Not only is it unpleasant aesthetically, it’s a frustrating experience to constantly navigate cords. And soon, it may be obsolete, with one analyst predicting that Apple will do away with the charging port on their highest end model phones by 2021.
In addition to traditional charging ports, the Sobro Side Table features a wireless charging pad built into the tabletop. Sobro
All of which means, we should expect to see the continued expansion of wireless charging devices—pads, stands or similar, of various sizes, that allow users to simply place down their devices and easily achieve a full charge—as well as some innovation in the wireless charging space, like Wi-Charge, a light-based charging system that beams energy to your phone from a ceiling-based battery.
Most likely, wireless charging will start to be incorporated into more of our home’s furniture—kitchen countertops, desks, coffee tables or nightstands, like the Sobro End Table. Manufacturers and developers will look to make it as easy as possible to keep the devices that have become essential to our lives fully charged.
Glioblastoma is one of the most common and aggressive forms of brain cancer, and it is particularly difficult to treat. Now, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have come up with a new approach to treatment for the disease, by growing organoids based on a patient’s own tumor to find the most effective treatments. Digital Trends spoke to senior author Dr. Donald O’Rourke to learn more.
The technique uses mini-brains — pea-sized organoids grown from stem cells which recreate features of full-scale brains. The mini-brains are similar enough to real brains that they can be used for testing out medical treatments to see how a full-sized brain would respond.
The breakthrough in this research is regarding treatment individualization. One of the challenges of treating a complex disease like brain cancer is that different people respond in different ways to the various treatment options available. After surgery has been performed to remove a tumor, doctors typically begin further treatment using radiation or chemotherapy around one month later. That means there isn’t always time to use perform genetic analysis to see which treatment might be best suited for a particular patient — the doctors need to know what will work and start further treatment as soon as possible.
This is where the mini-brains come in. Doctors can take stem cells from a patient’s tumor and grow them into a tumored mini-brain, within a few weeks. Then these organoids can be implanted into mouse brains, and doctors can test how they respond to different treatments. They can try things like different combinations of drugs, or a relatively new type of treatment called CAR T-cell therapy, in which a patient’s immune system cells are changed so they attack the cancer cells. They can see which treatment is most effective for particular tumors, and then apply those treatments to the patient.
For children, spending time in nature might be a necessity. Growing up in an exclusively urban environment could have long-lasting implications that show themselves years later. And the converse may be true, too: Growing up surrounded by nature may confer long-term benefits that safeguard mental health — and may even lower the likelihood of premature death.
That’s the take-away from a May 2019 paper that analyzes nature exposure and mental health in 3,585 people from four cities in Europe. People who grew up with low exposure to nature also tended to have high levels of nervousness and depression in adulthood, the research suggests.
Spending time in nature could have benefits that last long into adulthood.
At the time, the study’s senior author Mark NieuwenhuijsenInverse that green space’s benefits may not be obvious to a child, but skipping out on nature time could affect mental health later on.
“The people that reported more exposure to nature actually have better mental health than those that don’t even after we adjust for exposure at the time of the interview when they are adults,” Nieuwenhuijsen said.
The study can’t completely explain why missing out on nature as a child seems to have detrimental effects later in life. The team offers two potential explanations for their results.
The first is that nature is inherently good for you. Having a 90-minute “nature experience” is linked to lower levels of rumination — the persistent and negative thoughts that are a risk factor for mental health conditions. Spending time near blue spaces, like ponds, oceans or lakes, can also reduce stress. A review published earlier this year in The Lancet found that when an area’s vegetation index increases, premature death rates go down among people who lived up to a third of a mile away.
The second explanation is that growing up in nature may also mean you don’t spend your crucial developmental years awash in the filth of city living.
Just two days of exposure to air pollution levels at the limits recommended by the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency is linked to psychiatric-related hospitalizations in children. Growing up near a polluted highway may impact cognitive development, and, in China, air pollution is linked to unhappiness. It’s plausible that growing up outside a city may lower the risk for these issues.
It may also be a little bit of both. Wilma Zijlema, the study’s first author, told Inverse that these results show that cities should invest in green spaces, especially for kids.
“We hope that city mayor, urban planners, and architects realize how important urban nature is and that they will ensure that nature is accessible for all children so that they can grow up in a healthy environment that can have long-term benefits for their health,” she said.
Electric vehicles have been helping Americans get around for more than a hundred years. At the start of the 20th century, a third of the vehicles on the road were battery powered. Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the sports car company that still bears his name, was among the first to develop an electric vehicle, debuting the P1 in 1898. Even Henry Ford dabbled with the technology in the early 1900s. Then again, it was also his mass-produced Model T that decimated demand for EVs in the first place.
Today, however, as American consumers face rising fuel prices and a deepening climate crisis, EVs are undergoing a resurgence in popularity. Over a million plug-in vehicles now drive on US roads and account for 2.5 percent of all new vehicle sales in the country. Though to be fair, that figure pales in comparison to the 55 percent of new car sales of the electric variety in Norway. More EVs are sold to Americans today than cars with manual transmissions. As electric vehicle sales continue to rise, automakers are taking notice and developing their own electric offerings in an effort to tap into the growing market.
Tesla helped create that market and remains an industry leader. The Model S was the bestselling plug-in vehicle between 2015 and 2017, only to be edged out in 2018 by the Model 3. In 2019, Tesla expanded its EV offerings with a pair of new vehicles, the polarizing (but still wildly popular) $39,900 Cybertruck, which debuted at the LA Auto Show in November, and a battery-powered ATV to go along with it. And come late next year, the company plans to put its electric semi into limited production as well.
Tesla is far from the only startup in the electric-vehicle market. Polestar announced in October that it will open its first EV store in Montreal by the end of next year, and Lunaz has quietly set about retrofitting classic luxury cars with 21st century conveniences like cruise control and regenerative braking. We also saw a surge of luxury SUVs with at least hybrid drivetrains, in 2019, such as the Bentley Bentayga, the Audi e-Tron, the Jaguar I-Pace, the (only slightly delayed) Mercedes EQC 400 and the Porsche Taycan all coming to market.
Industry stalwarts like Ford and Harley-Davidson are similarly making the jump to EVs. Ford’s Mustang — the iconic American muscle car — is getting an all-electric power plant as part of the company’s Mach-E redesign. Harley, on the other hand, recently resumed production of its LiveWire motorcycle.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer argued earlier this year in favor of spending $454 billion over 10 years to replace every gas-powered vehicle on American roads — all 63 million of them — with electric alternatives.
“Critics have long said that bold action on climate change would cost America money and jobs. This is not true,” Schumer wrote in his NYT op-ed. “My plan is estimated to create tens of thousands of new, good-paying jobs in this country and should re-establish the United States as the world leader in auto manufacturing.” Of course, that assumes Democrats take back control of Congress following next year’s election.
Humans are incredible living machines, with legs strong enough to run marathons and brains smart enough to know that invisible dark matter exists. Our bodies make sure we hear the correct frequencies, send the right immune cells to a paper cut and know when to stop drinking water. But there’s still much to untangle about our human bodies, so all the time, we are discovering new organs and new secrets about how all of our nooks and crannies keep us going. This past year, new discoveries revealed an invisible network of immune cells, a “Jell-O” violin in our ears and how the oldest people in this world survived to such extreme ages.
“Jell-O” hearing
(Image credit: MIT Micromechanics Group)
Humans might hear so well because of a tiny “Jell-O” violin that sits inside the ears. The thin, blob of tissue, otherwise known as the tectorial membrane, is made up of 97% water. This tissue helps to bring sound waves from the ear to nerve receptors, which then translate that vibration into an electrical signal the brain can read. New research conducted on mice has found that this ear Jell-O helps the cochlea — a cavity in the inner ear that contains these nerve receptors — separate high frequencies from low frequencies. It does so by changing its stiffness, based on water flow that runs through its tiny pores, similar to what happens when you tune a violin or guitar. [Read more about the ‘Jell-O’ Violin]
Tiny capillaries
(Image credit: Nature Video/Youtube)
Our bones might be full of a previously unknown network of microscopic tunnels. These pathways might be vital for transporting immune cells — made in bones — out to the blood for circulation. A group of researchers discovered hundreds of these tiny blood vessels, or capillaries, in the leg bones of mice. But finding something in mice doesn’t necessarily translate to humans, so one of the researchers decided to stick his own leg into an MRI machine. The scans of the researcher’s leg showed that there were holes in the bone tissue that could indicate that these capillaries also exist in humans. [Read more about these microscopic tunnels]
Stop drinking water
(Image credit: Knight lab/UCSF)
The brain makes sure that we don’t drink too much or too little water, using a prediction mechanism in the gut, according to new research. The group figured this out by implanting optical fibers and lenses in mice near the hypothalamus — a brain region that regulates blood pressure and other bodily processes and is home to “thirst cells.” A few seconds after drinking something, the mouth and throat begin firing signals to the brain. These signals tell the brain that you feel less thirsty — so you stop drinking. That way, you don’t keep drinking for the 10 minutes to an hour it takes for that liquid to actually enter the bloodstream and circulate to cells in the body.
But your mouth and throat would tell your brain to quench your thirst, irrespective of the type of liquid you’re drinking, if it weren’t for another mysterious signal. This one comes from the gut, and it makes sure the brain knows that the water reaching it is salty — which can dehydrate the body — or nonsalty, ensuring that the brain quenches thirst only when the mice drank fresh water. [Read more about how the body knows when to stop]
New organ
(Image credit: Hind Abdo)
This year, scientists discovered a previously unknown organ that sits right under the skin, and it may help you feel the pain of a pinprick. It was previously thought that needle pricks were sensed by nerve endings that sit below the outer layer of the skin. But a new study conducted on mice (but which is also thought to apply to humans) found that nerves tangled up in special cells are what help us feel this sensation. This mesh of branched cells called “Schwann cells” and nerves together makes up a new “sensory organ” because it responds to external pressure signals (pricks or jabs) and relays that information to the brain. [Read more about this new organ]
Tiny lizard-like muscles
(Image credit: Rui Diogo, Natalia Siomava and Yorick Gitton)
Human embryos grow extra, lizardlike muscles in their hands and feet that disappear before birth, scientists found. By looking at 3D images from an embryonic image database, a group found that at about week seven of gestation, human fetuses had hands and feet that contained about 30 muscles each. Six weeks later, they contained only 20. Before the baby is born, those extra muscles either meld into other muscles or shrink away, but it’s unclear why or how.
These temporary muscles might be leftovers from our ancestors and may have vanished from adult humans over 250 million years ago, when mammals first began evolving from mammal-like reptiles, the researchers suggest. But because the study was small, it needs to be replicated with a much larger group before researchers can say for certain that these appearing and disappearing muscles exist in all fetuses. [Read more about these minimuscles]
World’s oldest people
(Image credit: Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Supercentenarians, or people who are 110 years of age or older, might have a secret. A study published this year found that supercentenarians have higher-than-average concentrations of an immune cell called a “T helper cell” that may protect them from viruses and tumors. To figure this out, researchers drew blood from seven supercentenarians and five control participants, who ranged in age from those in their 50s to those in their 80s. They then isolated the immune cells and figured out what they were doing by measuring the messenger RNA that is produced by the genes in the cells. Messenger RNA translates genetic instructions from DNA and brings it to the nucleus of the cell, so that specific proteins can be produced.
The supercentenarians had a type of T helper cell called CD4 CTLs that had the capability to attack and kill other cells. Of course, it’s not clear if supercentenarians owe their longevity to these immune cells, but previously, such cells have been shown to attack tumor cells and protect against viruses in mice. [Read more about the world’s oldest people]
Brain efficiency
(Image credit: RUB, Erhan Genç)
There might be a reason why some people are really good at trivia and seem to “know everything”: very efficiently wired brains. A group of researchers in Germany analyzed the brains of 324 people who had varying degrees of general knowledge or semantic memory (the type of information that would come up in a game of trivia), based on questions given to them concerning various fields such as art, architecture and science.
Brain scans of the participants showed that those people who had retained and could recall more general knowledge had more efficient brain connections — stronger and shorter connections between brain cells. This makes sense, because imagine answering the question, “What year did the moon landing happen?”
We might have the word “moon” stored in one area of the brain, but the “moon landing” in another, and knowledge of the year it happened in yet another. People with an efficient brain can better connect those various items together to quickly answer the question. (But, the researchers didn’t find any link between more general knowledge and more brain cells.) [Read more about how trivia masters do it]
Immune cell X
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Scientists have discovered a previously unknown type of cell in the human body called the “immune cell X,” and it could act as two other immune cell types, playing a role in triggering type 1 diabetes, new research suggests. There is likely not a lot of these cells in the human body — maybe less than 7 out of every 10,000 white blood cells, but they might be powerful players in driving autoimmunity — when the body mistakes its own cells for something foreign and attacks them.
These X cells resemble both B cells and T cells, two cell types that are important for fighting infections (but are also responsible for autoimmune diseases). The X cell makes antibodies like B cells that activate T cells, which then go on to attack anything it deems foreign. In the case of type 1 diabetes, immune cells mistakenly destroy healthy beta cells in the pancreas that make the hormone insulin. The researchers found evidence that these X cells exist in those with type 1 diabetes, but not in healthy controls. Even so, it’s not clear if there are one or multiple cells responsible for the disease. [Read more about these rogue cells]
Tongues can smell
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In other news, the cells in your tongues have the ability to smell. Researchers discovered this after growing human taste cells in the lab. They found that those cells contained a couple of molecules found in olfactory cells, the cells found in the nose that are responsible for, well, smelling. When they exposed taste cells to odor molecules, the cells responded just like the olfactory cells do. But this isn’t uncommon — olfactory cells have also previously been found in the gut, in sperm cells and even in hair. Though we knew that taste and smell were greatly intertwined (which becomes apparent when a blocked-up nose makes food taste more bland), this study suggests human taste cells might be much more complicated than previously thought. [Read more about your tongue’s strange ability]
Limit to human endurance
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It turns out, humans, even endurance athletes, have limited energy. Scientists calculated the limit of human endurance to be around 2.5 times the body’s resting metabolic rate (the number of calories the body burns for basic physiological needs such as maintaining body temperature or breathing), or 4,000 calories per day for an average person. They calculated this by analyzing data from some of the most extreme endurance events that take place on our planet, such as the Race Across the USA, and by comparing that data to other endurance events.
They found that the longer the event, the more difficult it became to burn calories. But athletes don’t fall to the ground when they reach this 2.5-times threshold. They can keep going, but they can’t maintain a balance of the number of calories consumed and the amount burned, so they begin to lose weight, which isn’t sustainable in the long term. What’s more, researchers found that pregnant women operated at around 2.2 times their resting metabolic rate, just by growing a baby. So no matter the activity, growing a baby, cycling or running across the U.S., the body seems to have a limit to the amount of energy it can give you in the long term. [Read more about this ultimate limit]
Winter is here in the northern hemisphere and you might be looking for ways to cozy up your home. Smart lighting can certainly brighten things up, but the price to get started sometimes feels prohibitive. Luckily enough, you can grab a Google Smart Light Starter Kit, as well as an additional GE C-Life smart bulb, for just $29 ($39 off) at Kohls.
The Starter Kit itself includes a Google Home Mini and one GE C-Life smart bulb, but this deal also comes with a free second bulb, a $13 value. You’re no doubt well acquainted with the Home Mini already — it’s a conveniently small smart speaker with full Google Assistant functionality. As for the C-Life bulbs, no hub is necessary — they connect directly to the Home Mini. As soon as they’re screwed in and powered on you can detect them via the Google Home app and get going.
Smart lighting deals don’t get much sweeter than this — considering the Home Mini has an MSRP of $35 on its own, the C-Life bulbs are essentially free. Whether you’re looking to expand your smart home set up or you’re just getting started, it’s worth it to jump on this. Pick up the Home Mini with two GE C-Life smart bulbs for $29 ($39 off) at Kohls.
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