Game-Changing Cancer Test

Daily Upsider on January 23, 2024

An ongoing human study suggest that a new experimental cancer test can accurately detect up to 18 early-stage cancers. But how does it work? And maybe even more importantly, how much will it cost?

The new cancer test works by analyzing blood proteins, instead of tumor DNA, and showed this style of test may accurately detect up to 18 early-stage cancers. The US biotech firm, Novelna, presented trial results involving 440 individuals with 18 different cancers, using blood plasma samples from each patient and 44 healthy donors.

The Novelna team achieved high sensitivity and specificity by analyzing trace proteins in the blood. The test, which also considers sex-specific proteins, identified 93% of male and 84% of female cancers at stage I with 99% specificity. The researchers proposed the test as a foundation for a cost-effective, accurate, multi-cancer screening on a population-wide scale, covering major human organs.

Acknowledging the trial’s small size, the team stresses the need for larger trials to confirm accuracy. Despite this, they highlighted the significance of detecting low-level proteins in blood samples for early tumor identification. Implementing such tests could improve survival rates, especially for cancers like breast cancer, and contribute to global efforts in combating the substantial impact of cancer, which currently accounts for one in every six deaths worldwide.

Novelna also anticipates that the test will be much cheaper than current option, with the estimated cost to be below $100. Current tests, like the Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) tests, can often cost close to $1,000.

Related articles: How to Cut Your Risk of Prostate Cancer by a Third and a novel Saliva Test for Breast Cancer

Human Life Expectancy Gap Decreases

Daily Upsider on January 23, 2024

A recent study has revealed a surprising new global trend in the life expectancy gap between men and women.

People are living longer all over the world, from regions in Africa to areas like California. However, the situation is not as straightforward as everyone living longer.

The study from Spain’s Universidad de Alcalá has revealed a global trend: the life expectancy gap between men and women is narrowing. The researchers categorized world populations into five clusters and found that each area has experienced longer life expectancies and reduced gender disparities in the last 30 years. The data also suggests that these trends will continue into the next decade.

Workplace safety improvements have led to fewer male job-related deaths. However, aspects of closing the life expectancy gap between men and women remains a challenge due to risks linked to the Y chromosome and potential non-communicable diseases. But examining data from 1990 to 2000, researchers found increased longevity in many countries.

Related Article: How to Add Years to Your Life

Grouping nations into five clusters based on mortality trends from 1990 to 2010, the study revealed rising life expectancies and decreasing male-female mortality gaps across all clusters. These positive trends are expected to continue into 2030, indicating a global shift toward improved longevity and more equal mortality rates between genders.

Africa has shown the most significant improvements in mortality indicators. Lead author Professor David Atance emphasized the worldwide growth in aging processes, even in well-performing high-income countries, albeit at a slower rate.

The lessening of the gender longevity gap, seen in both cluster and country analyses, is also attributed to the shift away from past “harmful” blue-collar lifestyles.

Harvesting Energy from Black Holes

Daily Upsider on January 22, 2024

In a groundbreaking study by researchers at Tianjin University in China, the potential of black holes as a future energy source is being explored. The researchers, Zhan-Feng Mai and Run-Qiu Yang, have proposed two intriguing scenarios in which primordial black holes could be utilized to meet the growing energy demands of humanity.

As the global population continues to expand, scientists are exploring novel and unconventional ways to generate power. Black holes, once thought to be mere cosmic vacuum cleaners, are now being considered as a possible energy source.

The first scenario involves “charging” a primordial black hole, a tiny black hole formed shortly after the Big Bang, by feeding it electrically charged particles until it repels them, indicating that it is fully charged, much like a battery. Energy could then be collected from the black hole through a process called superradiance, where electromagnetic or gravitational waves carrying more energy than was initially fed in are deflected into the black hole and converted into a usable energy source.

The second possibility involves harnessing the energy stored in the form of particle pairs that emerge in the presence of an electric field. Previous research has shown that an electric field exists around the event horizon of black holes, and some of these fields are strong enough to create both electrons and positrons. In this scenario, the positrons of a fully charged black hole would be ejected and available for collection and use as an energy source.

While the researchers have not delved into the physical means of harvesting energy from black holes or estimated the time required to develop the necessary technology, they have calculated that such engineering could allow for 25% of the produced energy to be usable.

Hopefully, nobody gets a silly idea like creating a black hole in a lab for experimentation. Might make a good movie plot. Then again, we could just try to make a miniature sun, like in Spider Man 2.

The Truth About Fossil Fuels

Daily Upsider on January 22, 2024

Were you taught in school that fossil fuels come from dinosaurs bones? Or maybe you just have that impression from the very name “fossil fuels”.

The origin of the word actually does not refer to what we generally think of as fossils. According to Oxford Dictionary, the word “fossil” means, “[o]btained by digging; found buried in the earth” and the use in the word “fossil fuels” predates our more common usage in reference to fossilized bones.

Fossil fuels are actually from things like algae, bacteria, and phytoplankton, not from dinosaur bones.

I remember watching a neat video on the subject early last year and seeing an interesting comment saying that because of how they say it in his native language, he had never even considered that some people would draw a connection to dinosaur fossils. He was from somewhere in Europe if I remember correctly.

There is also an internet factoid (definition 1) floating around that claims John D. Rockefeller came up with the term “fossil fuel” to trick people into thinking it was a scarce resource to drive up the price. From what I could find, this seems to be entirely made up.