The stork hunting probably doesn’t help

Male fertility has been declining, and declining it turns out, for decades.

In 1992, a study found a global 50% decline in sperm counts in men over the previous 60 years. Multiple studies over subsequent years confirmed that initial finding, including a 2017 paper showing a 50% to 60% decline in sperm concentration between 1973 and 2011 in men from around the world.

The culprit isn’t known, but more and more attention is turning to endocrine disruptors — chemicals like phthalates that are found in food-grade plastics. (But air pollution, radiation, and heavy metals don’t do us any good.)

Eyes are opening

Georgia is one of the states seeing the sharpest rise in Covid-19 vaccinations over the past week, as the country as a whole is seeing a jump in first-time vaccinators.

An average of about 390,000 first doses were administered every day over the past seven days as of Thursday, according to the CDC, up 31% from a week ago.

But in Georgia and the other nine states with the highest levels of new cases (and lowest vaccination rates), “first doses are up 46% week over week” according to CDC data.

A small step to a Covid treatment

There’s no cure for Covid-19; the best drug treatment is remdesivir, which at best shortens the illness’s duration. The reason: SARS-CoV-2, like other coronaviruses has an enzyme (called ExoN) that ‘proofreads’ the RNA the virus produces — but that same process also removes the kind of nucleoside antiviral medications that might treat it.

But now Iowa State biochemists have been able to see and record the structure of ExoN. That information, they hope, is a step toward finding a way to neutralize the enzyme, letting antivirals do their work.

Captain Obvious is at the chocolate fountain

“Study shows food choices at an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet tied to likelihood for weight gain” says the University of Kansas.

How sunlight causes melanoma

This almost got Captain Obvious’s attention, but it’s actually interesting: The prevailing idea that UVB radiation from sunlight causes DNA errors, leading to melanoma, turns out to be off by a bit.

In fact (found biomedical researchers at the Van Andel Institute in Michigan) UVB causes a chemical change to the DNA: It turns cytosine and thymine into uracil, which “primes the DNA to mutate during normal cell replication, thereby causing alterations that underlie melanoma.”

This unexpected extra step, they think, may lead to new ways to prevent melanoma, and might even help create therapies for other types of cancer.

Automatic insulin on the horizon

Following up on work by those shifty Danes, a medical researcher at Indiana University has developed an impressive kind of insulin: It’s a molecule that senses the level of blood sugar and can ‘turn on’ (i.e., open) when glucose levels are high, but turn off when the levels are low.

Currently it works with fructose, but a glucose sensor is next — and one that opens and closes the insulin at exactly the right times. So, “[T]here will be much work to do to translate our proof of principle to an FDA-approved product.”

Klaatu barada nikto?

If you play background music in your pharmacy, consider this: Dutch researchers found that if the lyrics are in “Simlish,” the nonsense language from The Sims games, people can understand one another better than if the singing is in English.

To learn this, though, they had to stretch the bounds of decency:

During the experiment, the researchers subjected more than 100 participants to sentences from the three versions of the hits ‘Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)’ and ‘Hot N Cold’ at different volume levels.

(Katy Perry was chosen because — and I did not know this — she has released her songs in Simlish.)

This you can inhale

Could a cannabis mouth spray and a chemotherapy med work together to fight glioblastoma? The Brits are going to test it.

The cannabis drug — Sativex — is already used to treat pain, inflammation, and anxiety, and there’s some evidence it can fight tumors.

“We think that Sativex may kill glioblastoma tumour cells and that it may be particularly effective when given with temozolomide chemotherapy, so it may enhance the effects of chemotherapy treatment in stopping these tumours growing, allowing patients to live longer.

Cities aren’t depressing after all

You might think — if you live in or visit a big city — that city life is not great for your mental health. This may be true, but one thing it is good for: depression.

A study out of the University of Chicago found that people in urban areas have lower level of depression than those in rural or suburban ones. Why? Social interaction. Even walking briskly past hundreds of strangers can help combat depression by making you feel at least some sort of connection to your fellow humans.

“There are some advantages in cities because all of these disorders — depression, anxiety — they’re really associated with decreases in social isolation. In cities, while they’re stressful in many ways, they actually have less isolation and more ability for people to network.”

Alviiiiiiiiiin!!!

Chipmunks in California carry the Plague, leading to park closures while rangers … deal with the problem.