The News Not Noise Letter: News That Doesn't Suck
Chocoholics rejoice! Scientists have discovered the reason chocolate is so delicious. Plus: there's a bear on Mars (sort of), and why is everyone getting "inflation chickens"?
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Here’s some news that doesn’t suck:
What Are Inflation Chickens? We credit the New York Times for marking this as a trend. Gotta say I’ve noticed it too but wasn’t bold enough to declare it a “thing.” This week the Times noted one unexpected side effect of the ongoing inflation crisis: more people are buying chickens. As the cost of groceries has soared over the past year, egg prices have spiked unusually high lately in part due to an avian flu outbreak so widespread that it has killed over 58 million birds from commercial and backyard flocks in the past year, according to the USDA. In an effort to avoid record-high egg prices, more and more Americans are looking to buy and raise their own hens. Have you gotten in on the “inflation chicken” trend? Let us know in the comments! And enjoy our header image of chickens who belong to some good friends of News Not Noise. They predated the pandemic but foretold what was to come. They live in the Hollywood Hills and are very camera friendly. So, naturally, the chickens are called “The Kardashchickens.” And enjoy our header image of chickens who belong to Julian Morris and Landon Ross, good friends of News Not Noise whose chicks predate the pandemic but foretold what was to come. These hens live in the Hollywood Hills and are very camera friendly so, naturally, they’re called “The Kardashchickens.”
Genetic Engineering vs. Leukemia: What if scientists could take your immune cells, “teach” them to fight hard-to-treat blood cancers, and put them right back in your body? As it turns out, we don’t have to ask, because they can, and they are. CAR T-cell therapy is an emerging treatment that can “banish” cancers previously considered nearly untreatable. How does it work? First, you need to understand that T-cells are a class of white blood cells that can identify and kill cells in your body which have been infected by viruses or which have mutated into cancers. Doctors are able to extract T-cells from a patient’s blood and send them to a lab, where they are genetically modified to “recognize” the chemical signature of certain types of cancer cells. Doctors can then infuse the patient’s own modified T-cells into their blood, where they can get to work recognizing and destroying tumors. This treatment isn’t perfect — it carries the risk of dangerous side-effects, and so far the FDA has only approved CAR T-cell therapies for serious blood cancers and lymphomas — but it can show profound results in patients whose cancers have stopped responding to other treatments.
Green Spaces Coming to the UK: We Americans might want to borrow a few urban planning tips from our friends across the pond, because a new plan in England seeks to ensure that everyone in the country lives within a 15-minute walk to a green space or water. What constitutes a green space? That’s a bit of a gray area: according to the BBC, the UK’s definition of green space “includes any land with vegetation on it,” ranging from lush woodlands to even “a disused railway line.” A representative from Brighton pointed out that “nearly three million people live more than 10 minutes from green space” currently, and the Office of National Statistics reported in 2020 that Black English people were almost four times less likely than White English people to have an outdoor space at home like a garden or even a balcony. Hopefully the new move to establish more green infrastructure will mitigate some of these environmental disparities. PM Rishi Sunak said that the Environmental Improvement Plan is a “blueprint” for environmental action, and the plan also allocates funding to create or expand 25 national nature reserves and to protect rare wildlife.
What Was That Green Comet? If you looked up at the night sky in the wee hours of Thursday morning and saw a flash of green, you might’ve seen the Comet C/2022 E3, which hasn’t passed this close to Earth since the Stone Age. The last time it made a local visit was about 50,000 years ago, before the Neanderthals went extinct. If you missed it, don’t worry — you only have to wait another 50,000 years for it to make its return. But in the meantime, you can enjoy this incredible photo of the bright green comet by self-described “backyard astrophotographer” Andrew McCarthy.
Move Over, Man In The Moon: There’s a new space face in town. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a shot of the Martian surface that bears a striking resemblance to, well, a bear. The University of Arizona, which operates the orbiter, offered up some theories on what might have caused the formation: “The circular fracture pattern [the circular head shape] might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater. Maybe the nose is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could be lava or mud flows?” That sounds possible to us, or it could be that the Martian surface has secret hunny reserves. Either way, we’re glad the folks at NASA are keeping an eye out for space bears.
Hard to deny, it does look like a bear. The Mars Grizzly? Photo credit: @HiRISE on Twitter (NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter)
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