Allergic to cats? Chickens could help.
What is the strangest thing you have learned this week? Well, anything, we promise that you will have an even stranger answer if you listen PopsciSuccessful podcast.
The strangest thing I learned this week Apple, Spotify, YouTube and everywhere else, you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. This is your new favorite source for the strangest facts, figures and wikipedia. Popular science can bring together. If you like stories in this post, we guarantee that you will like the show.
Fact: the chickens could hold the key to eliminate cat allergies
By Kelley Heyer (Creator of the Dance apple!)
Most people allergic to cats do not react to fur – they react to a protein in the saliva of cats called FEL D 1. And now, researchers may have found a way to reduce this allergen to the source using a surprising ally: chickens. It turns out that when chickens are exposed to cats, they produce antibodies against Fel D 1 and transmit them in their eggs.
Nourish these eggs rich in antibodies to a cat and, at least according to a 26 -week study, partially funded by Purina, the cat allergen levels fall. Essentially, the cat becomes less allergenic to humans. This is not a permanent solution (again), and no, you should not start feeding your chat raw eggs, especially with the bird flu in the image. But the idea that food could make cats safer for allergic animal lovers is a great change in the usual accent on the treatment of humans themselves. If it takes place, this research could make life much easier and less congestioned – for cat enthusiasts with allergies.
Fact: scientists showed people a completely new color
By Lauren Leffer
Researchers just showed humans a color that we had never been supposed to see. It’s called OloAnd it was revealed using a new system called OZ which stimulates individual photoreceptor cells in the eye with lasers. Normally, we perceive the color through an input combination of three types of conical cells – each set to short, medium or long wavelengths of light. But because of the way in which these sensitivities overlap, there is no natural wavelength which only activates “average” cones – there is therefore a whole theoretical range of colors which is invisible to us.
With the OZ system, the researchers have mapped the retinas of individual participants at the cellular level and only targeted their average cones, essentially creating a new artificial entry. The result was an abnormally lively blue blue shade that the five test subjects described in a surprisingly similar way. They called him OloAfter the digital coordinates of the stimulation model: 0 on short waves cones, 1 on the middle, 0 on long.
Beyond the novelty of a new color, this method could help scientists study daltonism and perception. This could even help them fully simulate new forms of color vision. For the moment, the technology is bulky and experimental, but it offers an exciting overview of how our sense of reality could be extended – a conical cell at the same time.
Fact: Xenon may have helped humans at Speedrun Mount Everest
By Rachel Feltman
Four British climbers recently succeeded in Speedrun Mount Everest – in just five days – thanks to partly, they say, to a noble gas. They trained to hypoxic tents for months to simulate high altitude conditions and have taken helicopters to skip parts of the usual two -month climb, which is completely normal for the course for people who try to climb the summit in a tight schedule. But 10 days before their push at the top, they did something more: they were sedation and dosed with xenon gas. This noble gas, formerly used as anesthesia, would now increase the production of red blood cells and protect the brain to extreme altitudes.
The climbers succeeded in their rapid journey, which was part of an effort to collect funds for charitable works. But the experts say that there is no solid evidence that the xenon really improves performance and that mountaineering purists are crying. The World Anti -Doping Agency has prohibited xenon in sports, and although mountaineering is not officially regulated, the International Climbing and Mountanism Federation recently published a declaration to make its use. Meanwhile, Everest continues to be a magnet for controversy – elitist tourism and ecological damage to increasingly extreme summit strategies.
Maybe the real question is not to know if we can Continue to find new ways to climb Everest, but if we should.
More offers, reviews and purchasing guides
