šŸ§¬ The Distilled Download - May 10

šŸ¦¾Should you train to failure, Nuclear launch codes revealed, and mind-blowing human brain images

Greetings, fellow science nerds! šŸ¤“ Hereā€™s your latest installment of The Distilled Download.

Iā€™ve been a bit MIA lately, having spent a few weeks traveling and visiting family over Passover. But I never stop reading science, and Iā€™ve been working on many research projects, which I hope to share with you all soon!

And now.

The Download

šŸ§  Mind-Blowing Image ofā€¦ a Mind
Weā€™ve always known that the human brain is amazingly complex, but weā€™ve never actually seen it in full detailā€“until now. Researchers took a 1mm (cubic) brain fragment from a 45-year-old epilepsy patient, cut it into 5,000 slices, each only 34nm thick, scanned them with an electron microscope, and stitched them all together with an AI program to create a 3D render. That tiny chunk contained ~57,000 cells and 150 million synapses ā€” the connections between neurons. Storing it all took 1.4 petabytes of space. Theyā€™re still analyzing all the data, but so far, theyā€™ve discovered all sorts of cool structures and relationships between neurons that weā€™ve never seen before.

Because scientists are awesome, they made it all available for free online for us to play with šŸ¤“ .

A single neuron (white) shown with 5,600 of the axons (blue) that connect to it. The synapses that make these connections are shown in green.Credit: Google Research & Lichtman Lab (Harvard University). Renderings by D. Berger (Harvard University)

āš ļø Terrifying Piece of US Nuclear History I Just Learned
During the cold war, the US had more than 1,000 nuclear missiles, all safely locked behind ā€œnuclear launch codes.ā€ These were supposed to ensure that they couldnā€™t actually be launched without the direct authorization of the president. Exceptā€¦ apparently, as soon as the code-locks were installed on the missiles, the US Strategic Command generals had them all set to ā€œ00000000ā€ so that there wouldnā€™t be any extra delays in case they were needed. The code stayed the same for almost twenty years. This all came out in 2004, in an interview with Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Yet another thing the movies got wrongā€¦ but this time I donā€™t blame them šŸ¤¦ā€ā™‚ļø.

šŸ¦¾ Is Training to Failure Necessary?
A new study had people do leg presses and extensions to failure on one leg but stopping 1-2 reps shy of failure on the other. These were people who exercised regularly and were eating a caloric surplus. They still did the same total number of reps per exercise session because the ā€œnot to failureā€ leg could go a bit longer at the end.

The result? After 8 weeks, both legs showed identical muscle growth. Stopping short of failure could allow for more total reps, making this the ideal strategy (pushing the very last set to failure could also benefit, though).

ā˜• Coffee vs Cancer?
Has anyone ever yelled at you for drinking ā€œtoo muchā€ coffee? A new study in cancer patients found that ~4 cups per day is ā€œjust right.ā€ It looked at 1,700 patients diagnosed with stages I-III colorectal cancer, and found that those who drank 4+ cups per day had a 32% lowered risk of their cancer flaring up again compared to those who drank <2 per day. They also found a U-shaped curve of All-Cause Mortality vs coffee consumption, with the lowest risk being 4 cups per day, having 68% risk of dying ((HR: 0.68, 95% CI: 0.53, 0.88). We canā€™t fully pull causation from this type of study, but it bodes well for fellow brew-lovers šŸ™‚ 

Recent Video Highlight

Catnip Explained ā€“ Ever wonder why cats evolved a bunch of weird behaviors around catnip? Here, I go into many of the details of how it can be useful for humans! (No, it canā€™t get us high)

Thanks for reading! I love to hear feedback, so feel free to respond to this email or tag me on Twitter or Threads (which Iā€™ll start using seriously one of these days šŸ™Š).

Reply

or to participate.