Paracetamol: the dark side of the white pill and who the Labradoodle is

In the next collection of interesting scientific news of the week:

• Take risks with paracetamol
• Lunar soil pickup
• Bronze Age: Blood Without Milk
• Kind and fluffy – labradoodle

Paracetamol: no fear, but reproach

Paracetamol is one of the most popular analgesics in the world. But as a group of scientists led by Ohio University neuroscientist Baldwin Way found out, this drug can not only relieve headaches, but also make you take unnecessary risks.

Actually, previous studies have already demonstrated that the active substance acetaminophen, which is part of paracetamol and drugs similar in action, has not only an analgesic effect, but also reduces the feeling of empathy (compassion), does not allow people to notice that they offend someone with their behavior or words, and even dulls cognitive function.

Now, as Baldwin Way writes in the publication Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, it turned out that “acetaminophen, apparently, extinguishes negative emotions when a person is about to take risks. People simply do not feel fear. And when you consider that in the US 25% of the population take acetaminophen every week, it becomes clear that reduced risk perception cannot but have important consequences for the whole society. “

And by the way, as it turned out in the course of previous studies, in some cases, paracetamol does not cope with pain at all and does not work better than a placebo, but at the same time it has many side effects.

Despite the dark side of paracetamol discovered by scientists, it remains one of the most sought-after drugs in the world, a drug officially recommended by the WHO, and the first line of defense in case you suspect that you have contracted the coronavirus.

“Imagine a scenario where a person with mild symptoms of Covid-19 takes paracetamol, and then decides that it would be okay if he goes out and meets with friends,” Way reflects, suggesting an urgent review of the established attitude towards paracetamol.

NASA: time to collect rocks?

The American space agency is ready to pay good money for the extraction of lunar soil. It would seem that who else, if not NASA, should have the largest reserves of its samples (here the supporters of the theory of space conspiracy should, in theory, start up: yeah, that means they haven’t flown anywhere, there are no pebbles).

But it’s not that simple. The agency does not so much need the moonstones themselves, but rather enthusiasts ready to mine them. Therefore, it is willing to pay anyone who can find suitable samples, blow off moon dust from them, photograph and transfer ownership to NASA. The stones may not be delivered to Earth, but left in place – NASA will still pay, albeit a smaller amount.

The contract does not imply a flight to the moon – it is currently only available to three countries – it is designed for enthusiasts (for money, of course) to develop robots that NASA itself or other large aerospace companies will deliver to our satellite.

The thing is that the United States, as follows from last year’s decree of President Trump, plans to become a leader in the extraction of useful resources on asteroids and the Moon. At the same time, there is no international agreement or at least laws governing such exploitation of space, and the existing agreements do not have the force of law and are rather vague in their wording.

Companies wishing to participate in the tender are invited to submit plans for the collection of lunar soil, or regolith (from 50 to 500 grams are accepted, but we must think that if someone can offer a larger piece, NASA will not refuse) from anywhere on our satellite, provide photographic evidence that the soil was actually taken on the Moon, and then transfer exclusive ownership of the samples to NASA. They promise to reimburse 20% of the cost of the samples immediately, the rest – upon delivery. NASA believes the contracts will be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

“We do buy regolith, but we are doing this to demonstrate that the resources mined on the moon can actually belong to people who are investing their labor and their capital in this business,” said NASA chief Jim Bridenstine.

He promised that the method of sampling will be clarified later, but it is not yet clear whether this means that the soil will be taken by astronauts and studied directly on the Moon, or it will still be delivered to Earth.

However, it is clear that the Americans are indeed determined to land on the moon again by 2024 and, using local resources, prepare for an expedition to Mars.

In particular, the specialists hope to master the extraction of lunar ice in the polar regions of the planet in order to use it as drinking water, as well as for the production of fuel (after molecular breakdown) necessary for the flight to the red planet.

At the same time, the space agency, instead of independently developing and funding such missions, is increasingly relying on private space companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which already delivers cargo to the ISS for NASA, and recently successfully tested a manned module.

• Lunar conspiracy. Why do many people believe that landing on the moon is a fake, and how to convince them?

Warriors who did not drink milk

About 3,200 years ago, an epic battle took place on the banks of the Tollensee River in the north of modern Germany, one of the largest conflicts of the late Bronze Age. Hundreds of bodies were left on the battlefield, killed with wooden, stone and bronze weapons. What these people fought for remains a mystery, DNA tests do not give an answer to such questions, but they can tell something about the diet of ancient warriors. DNA sequencing of 14 skeletons showed that these people did not drink raw milk – they did not digest lactose.

“We hoped to find two groups of people with different ethnic backgrounds (this would explain the confrontation on the battlefield), but no, they were all the same to boring,” explains the co-author of the study, published in the publication Cell Biology, a geneticist at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz Joachim Burger.

Even the discovery of two female skeletons did not greatly arouse scientists, but still a surprise happened.

As it turned out, all these ancient warriors could not tolerate milk: they did not yet have the gene mutation characteristic of most modern Europeans.

As shown by previous studies, for 1000-500 years BC. the population of modern Germany already had the ability to assimilate lactose, so it should have arisen earlier, but after the Battle of Tollense.

This, in turn, means that the entire population of Europe has undergone mutations over 100 generations. “This is the strongest selection ever found in the human genome,” enthuses Burger.

In 2007, he already proved that the first European farmers, which appeared more than 8 thousand years ago, were also lactose intolerant.

Then the scientist believed that the mutation spread along with the development of agriculture and animal husbandry. The argument in favor of this theory was that people who could digest milk received more calories, their children had a higher chance of survival, and the gene responsible for breaking down lactose was thus passed down from generation to generation.

However, skeletons from the pain of the battle in the Tollensee Valley clearly demonstrate that it took humans six more centuries before this gene was fixed in them. In addition, DNA analysis completely refuted the theory proposed in 2015 that the gene was imported into Western Europe as early as the fifth millennium BC. nomadic pastoralists from the steppes of modern Ukraine and Russia.

So scientists continue to wonder when and why Europeans began to drink milk. Burger has his own assumptions on this score: he admits that fresh milk helped to raise the immunity of residents of cities and villages of the Iron Age, and later the Roman Empire, where the crowded population invariably led to epidemics. But this is still only a guess.

• Scientists: people were able to digest milk 3 thousand years ago
• Milk and its substitutes: what is useful, what is harmful

The Australian Labradoodle is more of a poodle

What happens if you cross a Labrador Retriever (hunting dog) with a poodle (which today is considered decorative, but was once a very hunting dog)? Quite right, you will get funny, cheerful, curly labradoodles, in which in the first generation the ratio of genes of the two breeds will be 50-50.

Crossbreeding of these two breeds began back in the 1980s in an attempt to breed a guide dog that would hardly shed or cause an allergic reaction to the coat in the owner.

The Labradoodle should have inherited the skills of a service dog from the Labrador, and the hypoallergenic coat from the Poodle. Actually, it happened, but then the most interesting thing turned out.

DNA analysis of 21 Australian Labradoodles has shown that the genome of subsequent generations consists almost entirely of Poodle DNA. That is, their genes are gradually replacing the genes of the Labrador.

So today Australian Labradoodles are, rather, poodles with an excess of alleles that determine the type of coat. And the study itself demonstrated how changing just a few genes can lead to the creation of a new breed over a matter of generations.

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