There was a mildly interesting paper about food choice and nutritional sensing, using the worm C. elegans. The researchers describe how these worms avoid dead bacteria as food, but like live bacteria. One of the labile elements present in live bacteria but missing in the dead bacteria is the vitamin B2, aka riboflavin. It turns out that lack of B2 down-regulates (via the key metabolic regulator TORC1, in turn via decreased levels of ATP) some key proteases in the worm's gut, which naturally impairs their digestion and appetite. Unfortunately, the paper does not go on, as promised, to explain issues of food choice and nutrient seeking, which might be mediated by general lethargy, but may also be directed by more specific neural pathways connecting the gut with the brain- an area of significant interest these days.
- Sclerosis and corruption at UC.
- Should wars be long or short?
- Can residential architecture be interesting?
- ... a lobbyist for Tyson Foods was injured at the Republican baseball practice.
- A freight train seems to be headed for Trump, because the feudal Putin model doesn't work here (or at least, not yet).
- In civil rights, the Federal government has been captured by the South.
- And the EPA, by industry.
- The solution, as usual, is more guns.
- Emotion, behavior and intelligence as biological traits.
- Economic graph of the week: wage share and profit share, in Australia.
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| Wage share vs profit share, in Australia, very similar to other economies. What would it take to make developed economies great again? |
