Mar 7, 2022 09:28 PM
(This post was last modified: Mar 7, 2022 09:29 PM by C C.)
For decades, the FDA knew ‘forever chemicals’ were harmful but failed to act
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2...failed-act
INTRO: The Food and Drug Administration has understood since 1966 that the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS could increase cholesterol and cause liver lesions, E&E reported today. But for decades the agency approved proposals by Dupont, 3M and other companies to use PFAS in food packaging, despite knowing the chemicals migrate to food.
PFAS have been linked to serious health concerns, including cancer, harm to fetal development and reduced vaccine effectiveness. Drinking water and other household products can expose people to PFAS.
But the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that for most Americans, food is also a large source of exposure to these chemicals. One way PFAS get into food is they migrate from food packaging. Another potential source of exposure to PFAS through food is PFAS-contaminated irrigation water or sewage sludge applied to food crops.
As far back as the 1960s, animal studies showed the chemicals caused harm even months after exposure ended and industry studies showed they could migrate from paper and paperboard food packaging into food. An EWG analysis of FDA records found... (MORE - details)
Tiny worms make complex decisions, too
https://www.salk.edu/news-release/tiny-w...sions-too/
RELEASE: How does an animal make decisions? Scientists have spent decades trying to answer this question by focusing on the cells and connections of the brain that might be involved. Salk scientists are taking a different approach -- analyzing behavior, not neurons. They were surprised to find that worms can take multiple factors into account and choose between two different actions, despite having only 302 neurons compared to approximately 86 billion in humans.
The findings, published in Current Biology on March 7, 2022, have important implications for the way researchers assess motivation and cognitive abilities in animals. What's more, the study demonstrates that complex decision-making capabilities could be encoded in small biological and artificial networks.
"Our study shows you can use a simple system such as the worm to study something complex, like goal-directed decision-making. We also demonstrated that behavior can tell us a lot about how the brain works," says senior author Sreekanth Chalasani, associate professor in Salk's Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory. "Even simple systems like worms have different strategies, and they can choose between those strategies, deciding which one works well for them in a given situation. That provides a framework for understanding how these decisions are made in more complex systems, such as humans."
Whether eating prey or defending its food source, the predatory worm Pristionchus pacificus relies on biting. The team's challenge was to determine the worm's intentions when it bites.
The researchers found that P. pacificus chooses between two foraging strategies for biting its prey and competitor, another worm called Caenorhabditis elegans: 1) predatory strategy, in which its goal for biting is to kill prey, or 2) territorial strategy, in which biting is instead used to force C. elegans away from a food source. P. pacificus chooses the predatory strategy against larval C. elegans, which is easy to kill. In contrast, P. pacificus selects the territorial strategy against adult C. elegans, which is difficult to kill and outcompetes P. pacificus for food.
To the team, it appeared that P. pacificus weighed the costs and benefits of multiple potential outcomes of an action -- behavior that's familiar in vertebrates but unexpected in a worm.
"Scientists have always assumed that worms were simple -- when P. pacificus bites we thought that was always for a singular predatory purpose," says first author Kathleen Quach, a postdoctoral fellow in Chalasani's lab. "Actually, P. pacificus is versatile and can use the same action, biting C. elegans, to achieve different long-term goals. I was surprised to find that P. pacificus could leverage what seemed like failed predation into successful and goal-directed territoriality."
In the future, the scientists would like to determine which of P. pacificus' cost-benefit calculations are hard-wired or flexible. They hope more research like this will help further uncover the molecular underpinnings of decision-making.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2...failed-act
INTRO: The Food and Drug Administration has understood since 1966 that the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS could increase cholesterol and cause liver lesions, E&E reported today. But for decades the agency approved proposals by Dupont, 3M and other companies to use PFAS in food packaging, despite knowing the chemicals migrate to food.
PFAS have been linked to serious health concerns, including cancer, harm to fetal development and reduced vaccine effectiveness. Drinking water and other household products can expose people to PFAS.
But the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that for most Americans, food is also a large source of exposure to these chemicals. One way PFAS get into food is they migrate from food packaging. Another potential source of exposure to PFAS through food is PFAS-contaminated irrigation water or sewage sludge applied to food crops.
As far back as the 1960s, animal studies showed the chemicals caused harm even months after exposure ended and industry studies showed they could migrate from paper and paperboard food packaging into food. An EWG analysis of FDA records found... (MORE - details)
Tiny worms make complex decisions, too
https://www.salk.edu/news-release/tiny-w...sions-too/
RELEASE: How does an animal make decisions? Scientists have spent decades trying to answer this question by focusing on the cells and connections of the brain that might be involved. Salk scientists are taking a different approach -- analyzing behavior, not neurons. They were surprised to find that worms can take multiple factors into account and choose between two different actions, despite having only 302 neurons compared to approximately 86 billion in humans.
The findings, published in Current Biology on March 7, 2022, have important implications for the way researchers assess motivation and cognitive abilities in animals. What's more, the study demonstrates that complex decision-making capabilities could be encoded in small biological and artificial networks.
"Our study shows you can use a simple system such as the worm to study something complex, like goal-directed decision-making. We also demonstrated that behavior can tell us a lot about how the brain works," says senior author Sreekanth Chalasani, associate professor in Salk's Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory. "Even simple systems like worms have different strategies, and they can choose between those strategies, deciding which one works well for them in a given situation. That provides a framework for understanding how these decisions are made in more complex systems, such as humans."
Whether eating prey or defending its food source, the predatory worm Pristionchus pacificus relies on biting. The team's challenge was to determine the worm's intentions when it bites.
The researchers found that P. pacificus chooses between two foraging strategies for biting its prey and competitor, another worm called Caenorhabditis elegans: 1) predatory strategy, in which its goal for biting is to kill prey, or 2) territorial strategy, in which biting is instead used to force C. elegans away from a food source. P. pacificus chooses the predatory strategy against larval C. elegans, which is easy to kill. In contrast, P. pacificus selects the territorial strategy against adult C. elegans, which is difficult to kill and outcompetes P. pacificus for food.
To the team, it appeared that P. pacificus weighed the costs and benefits of multiple potential outcomes of an action -- behavior that's familiar in vertebrates but unexpected in a worm.
"Scientists have always assumed that worms were simple -- when P. pacificus bites we thought that was always for a singular predatory purpose," says first author Kathleen Quach, a postdoctoral fellow in Chalasani's lab. "Actually, P. pacificus is versatile and can use the same action, biting C. elegans, to achieve different long-term goals. I was surprised to find that P. pacificus could leverage what seemed like failed predation into successful and goal-directed territoriality."
In the future, the scientists would like to determine which of P. pacificus' cost-benefit calculations are hard-wired or flexible. They hope more research like this will help further uncover the molecular underpinnings of decision-making.