From the article: Now, a promising new drug has been developed that targets the nerve activity that causes both heart failure and sleep apnea. Researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand tested the drug, known as AF-130, on rats with chronic heart failure and sleep apnea. They found that AF-130 acted as an effective P2X3 receptor antagonist, normalizing the body’s respiratory response to hypoxia and substantially improving the amount of blood pumped by the heart (cardiac output). Breathing disturbances were eliminated.

“This drug does offer benefit for heart failure, but it’s two for the price of one, in that it’s also relieving the apnea for which there is currently no drug, only CPAP, which is poorly tolerated,” said Julian Paton, corresponding author of the study.

AF-130 was also found to reduce systemic inflammation, reduce the weight of the heart, and prevent fluid from gathering in the lungs (pulmonary edema), a common side effect of heart failure. It’s the first drug to control the brain-to-heart nervous activity that drives heart failure and associated sleep apnea.

The study’s findings support the notion that P2X3 receptors in the carotid arteries play a key role in the pathological mechanisms underlying cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

From the article: A recycling method developed by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) recovers up to 70% of lithium from battery waste without corrosive chemicals, high temperatures, and prior sorting of materials being required. The method combines mechanical processes with chemical reactions and enables inexpensive, energy-efficient, and environmentally compatible recycling of any type of lithium-ion battery. The results are reported in Communications Chemistry.

Lithium-ion batteries are omnipresent in our life. They are not only used for the wireless power supply of notebooks, smartphones, toys, remote controls, and other small devices, but also are the most important energy storage systems for the rapidly growing electric mobility sector. Increasing use of these batteries eventually results in the need for economically and ecologically sustainable recycling methods.

Presently, mainly nickel and cobalt, copper and aluminum, as well as steel are recovered from battery waste for reuse. Lithium recovery still is expensive and hardly profitable. Existing recovery methods mostly are of metallurgical character and consume a lot of energy and/or produce hazardous by-products. In contrast to this, mechanochemical approaches based on mechanical processes to induce chemical reactions promise to reach a higher yield and sustainability with a smaller expenditure.

From the article: A study of U.S. Special Operations Forces Veterans participating in an ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT treatment in Mexico showed that participants treated with these psychedelic substances showed a significant reduction in alcohol misuse 1 month after the start of the treatment. These effects persisted 6 months later and there was also a strong reduction in symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. The study was published in Military Psychology.

Participating in a war is a traumatic experience. Even for the highly trained personnel, elite soldiers chosen because of their outstanding physical and psychological resilience, exposure to combat situations, injuries and isolation have a profound adverse effect on health and well-being. To cope, many military veterans resort to drinking alcohol. Alcohol is the most misused substance by military personnel.

As a consequence of war experiences and psychological trauma caused by them, many veterans develop posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD. The most well-known symptoms of PTSD include intrusive memories of the traumatic event(s), the so-called flashbacks, bad dreams and frightening thoughts. Symptoms also include higher pain tolerance, emotional numbing and many others. Available treatments for PTSD and alcohol misuse are limited in their effectiveness.

“As a trauma psychologist, I have spent several years working directly with children, adolescents, and adults (including veterans) exposed to atrociously traumatic experiences,” said study author Stacey Armstrong, a clinical psychologist and postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education at The Ohio State University.

“In my clinical practice, it is essential that I utilize gold-standard, evidence-based treatments to address the functional impairment that often results from these events. However, while providing direct care to clients, many of whom were highly distressed, it became clear that too many were not responding to the established treatments. As I delivered these services, I became aware of and interested in the promising evidence from psychedelic-assisted therapy.”

From the article: The provisional political agreement, which was reached after nightlong negotiations between the EU parliament and states, seeks to raise the share of renewable energy to 42.5 percent, from 22 percent today.

The EU has set an ambitious target to become a "climate neutral" economy by 2050, with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The move also comes as the EU has sought to slash its dependence on Russian fossil fuels after Moscow cut gas supplies last year and the bloc placed bans on seaborne crude and other petroleum products from the country.

The figure is a compromise between the 45 percent share for renewables that was sought by EU lawmakers and the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, and the 40 percent preferred by the states.

The previous target for 2030 had been set at 32 percent.

The proposed directive seeks cutting red tape for renewable energy projects.

The goal is to "fast-track the deployment of renewable energies" as part of the EU's plan "to become independent from Russian fossil fuels, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine", said a statement from the Council of the EU which represents the bloc's governments.

Companies have complained that red tape has slowed the development of such infrastructure.

From the article: This is according to a new global analysis of trends in child and adolescent height and body mass index (BMI) led by Imperial College London and published in Nature.

The research, by a global consortium of more than 1500 researchers and physicians, analysed height and weight data from 71 million children and adolescents (aged 5 to 19 years) across urban and rural areas of 200 countries from 1990 to 2020.

Cities can provide a multitude of opportunities for better education, nutrition, sports and recreation, and healthcare that contributed to school-aged children and adolescents living in cities being taller than their rural counterparts in the 20th century in all but a few wealthy countries.

The new study found that in the 21st century, this urban height advantage shrank in most countries as a result of accelerating improvements in height for children and adolescents in rural areas.

The study also assessed children’s BMI - an indicator of whether they have a healthy weight for their height. The researchers found that on average children living in cities had a slightly higher BMI than children in rural areas in 1990. By 2020, BMI averages rose for most countries, albeit faster for urban children, except in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, where BMI rose faster in rural areas.

From the article: A new study of German couples has found that individuals with secure emotional attachment are more likely to forgive offences to their partners, but also to be forgiven. Persons with a preoccupied attachment style were more likely to forgive their partners, but were neither more nor less likely to be forgiven. The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

Romantic couples experience many positive moments in the course of their romantic relationship. But these relationships also involve conflicts. Although typically unpleasant and stressful, conflicts are not necessarily negative. Conflicts can be resolved and forgiven, thus strengthening the relationship. Due to this, forgiveness after conflicts is a central aspect of healthy and happy relationship functioning.

“Forgiveness is defined as a prosocial change characterized by decreased retaliation motivation or estrangement from the offender and by increased conciliation. Forgiveness can be understood as a coping strategy, that is, a ‘process of neutralizing a stressor that has resulted from a perception of an interpersonal hurt.’ Thus, the end-point of the forgiveness process occurs when an individual experiences little or no stress resulting from the transgression,” the authors of the new study explained.

Forgiveness can improve the quality of the relationship and it can also be good for mental health and the overall well-being. However, in abusive relationships, forgiveness can be harmful as it can place the forgiving individual at risk of further harm.

Forgiveness might also be shaped by emotional attachment patterns. These patterns start to be shaped by experiences with the caregiver in infancy and continue to affect social relationships throughout life. Researchers typically distinguish secure attachment, characterized by reciprocity, closeness, intimacy and constructive behaviors in a conflict, and insecure attachment patterns, characterized by low trust and negative views of oneself.

From the article: Proposals to pay for broadband networks by imposing new fees on Big Tech companies "are built on a false premise," Meta executives wrote in a blog post today.

"Network fee proposals do not recognize that our investments in content drive the business model of telecom operators," Meta executives Kevin Salvadori and Bruno Cendon Martin wrote. Meta's comments came a few weeks after Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters spoke out against the proposal being reviewed by European regulators.

Meta executives said telecom operators and content application providers (CAPs) "are symbiotic businesses, occupying different but complementary roles in the digital ecosystem. Every year, Meta invests tens of billions of euros in our apps and platforms—such as Facebook, Instagram, and Quest—to facilitate the hosting of content. Billions of people go online every day to access this content, creating the demand that allows telecom operators to charge people for Internet access. Our investment in content literally drives the revenue and business model of telecom operators."

Internet service providers in the EU argue that Big Tech companies should pay a "fair share" toward network-building costs. In the US, Federal Communications Commission Republican Brendan Carr claims that "Big Tech has been enjoying a free ride on our Internet infrastructure while skipping out on the billions of dollars in costs needed to maintain and build that network."

Big Tech companies don't actually get free access to the Internet, though. Anyone distributing content over the Internet pays their own providers, builds their own network infrastructure, or does some combination of the two.