Science, technology and technology news

How to walk to get rid of excess fat: expert advice

Regular walking is considered by doctors to be one of the most effective ways to maintain health. You can often hear about the conditional rate of ten thousand steps a day. According to the latest data, it is enough to take 5-7 thousand steps a day to improve the state of the cardiovascular system, CNN reports.

According to researchers from the United States, to get the maximum effect from walking, including for the figure, it is not enough just to walk fast. According to them, it is much more efficient to walk, constantly changing the pace. In this case, we can talk about an increase in metabolism by 20%.

Scientists noted that if you maintain a walking pace at which the heart rate is 57-63% of a person's maximum indicators, then fat will be burned more efficiently. For example, the maximum for a 48-year-old is 98 to 108 beats per minute.

Experts also named the mistakes that people often make while walking – wearing tight shoes with hard soles, tilting the body forward, unevenly distributed weight (for example, wearing a backpack on one shoulder). You need to walk with your foot on the heel, rolling it onto your toe.

Experts warned that excessive physical activity requires medical approval.

Scientists have previously found that older women need to walk daily to maintain health and reduce the risk of premature death. The average is 4.5 thousand steps at a walking pace. This significantly reduces the risk of death compared to a sedentary lifestyle, when a woman takes about 2.7 thousand steps a day.

During the day in Poland, the coronavirus was found in 5592 people. This is a record incidence rate in the country since May 2021, according to the Polish Ministry of Health.

The total number of COVID-19 cases in the country is 2,956,207.

During the day, 48 patients with coronavirus died, the total number of deaths increased to 76,300.

The day before, 5,559 cases of coronavirus were reported in Poland.

The online PlayStation Store has launched a Halloween sale of games. The maximum discount reaches -90%!

More than 500 titles have dropped in sale, ranging from the cult DOOM Eternal to the hits Resident Evil and Bioshock.

Murdered: Soul Suspect and Thief are offered with a 90% discount – they are given for 119 rubles instead of the original 1 199.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is sold 85% cheaper. So, if in normal times the title is available for 1,799 rubles, now it can be grabbed for only 269.

With a 70% discount, in turn, it is offered to purchase a horror game based on the film “Blair Witch” – Blair Witch. Previously, the game was available for 2,149 rubles, and now it is sold for 644.

This sale will end on November 4 at 02:59 am ET. You can get acquainted with all positions by clicking on this link.

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In the near future, algorithms will control the emotions and desires of millions of people around the world, and entire countries will turn into information colonies. This is how futurists see the future of the Internet, but in fact, this picture is not very far from real life. The largest IT corporations can already imperceptibly influence citizens of entire states and use their personal data. Why has the world only now realized the global domination of social networks and how tech giants influence the minds of millions of people, within the framework of the large-scale project “Algorithm. Who controls you? ” Head of the Institute for Internet Research, chief analyst of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) Karen Ghazaryan told “Lente.ru”.

“This is human nature”

“Lenta.ru”: Social networks – is it good or evil?

Ghazaryan : This is a means of communication that can be used for good and for evil, it is a reflection of the real world. Another question is that the effects that came to us with social networks (dopamine needle, the development of anxiety, Internet addiction), very smart researchers of media history like Marshall McLuhan could predict in advance.

But the creators of social networks did not understand them at all. These were children who were given matches.

What did the creators of social networks not understand?

The effect that social media can have in the future. They didn’t even anticipate that. When Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg said he wanted to bring the world together, he thought it was a cool idea and didn't think about the consequences. The problem with social media creators is that they thought better of humanity than it really is.

What did it turn into?

On the one hand, it's great when an uneducated Indian who can't write can record voice messages on WhatsApp. But on the other hand, in the same WhatsApp, he receives messages that a witch lives in a nearby village that needs to be burned, and people are cooperating to kill a person (lynching and mass beatings of local residents due to fakes in WhatsApp were widespread in India in 2017-2018 – approx. “Lenta.ru” ).

This person does not have critical thinking, he does not distinguish a false message from a correct one, he does not see where the propaganda is wired. You gave him matches, like a child, without teaching him how to use them at all. What could you expect? Perhaps you thought better of people, but you should have thought more! We are responsible for this. It's bad that it happened. But now we have to live with this, invest resources in learning to work with a new media environment. It should be noted that Facebook is implementing many projects in this area. But Facebook is not a single person alive: this is the task of the state as well. We need to develop media literacy among different categories of citizens.

When did politicians figure out that the future lies behind the algorithms of social networks, and began to use them for their own purposes?

It is believed that it was Obama who was the first to effectively use social networks for the purposes of the election campaign. In fact, this has been done in Asia before. For example, in the mayoral elections in Tokyo in the 2000s. In Japan, political advertising on the Internet has been banned for a long time. And a rather noisy story happened there when they started talking about the need to already allow political Internet advertising. Because a generation of candidates has emerged who have begun to understand how to communicate with the electorate using new tools. But Japanese history has not influenced the rest of the world as much as the example of Obama.

In your opinion, has people's attitudes towards social media changed after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when it turned out that millions of Facebook users were manipulated without their knowledge?

Not sure. I believe that any attempt to sell political advertising on social media is an attempt to sell the elixir of immortality. People believe what they want to believe. No amount of super-smart targeting will convince you to vote for someone else, which, by the way, has quite a lot of confirmed research.

Any political advertisement works for only ten percent of the undecided. Everyone else already knows what they want. But they don't really like to talk about this out loud, because this is a whole industry in which a lot of money is spinning.

It is also surprising to see how some users are outraged by the actions of Cambridge Analytica, they write that this is horror and a violation of all rights. But at the same time, they say what a cool election campaign Barack Obama had, without thinking that Obama used the same targeting tools for political influence through social networks. And now they shout: “We are being manipulated!” Really, yeah, are you serious?

Don't you believe that social media can control the political opinion of the general public?

Ten percent of undecided – definitely can. Plus, with the help of social networks, you can mobilize existing supporters. And the version that social networks can radically change a person's opinion with the help of the conditional 25th frame, in my opinion, is erroneous. We only accept what confirms our opinion.

You are talking about an information bubble. Sometimes it seems to a person that he has an established opinion about a problem, but in fact it is just a consequence of a post thrown by the algorithm in time.

And we like the information bubble. We create it ourselves. The person has a distortion of perception, and we always like what confirms our point of view. We can have inside ourselves some kind of view of the state of affairs in the world, and as soon as we read the same thing on the social network, we are like: “Cool, I thought so, I knew, I believed.” Man is flattered. This is how social media work. The algorithm adjusts more and more to your preferences, and you find yourself in this beautiful cozy information bubble.

Did the old media work the same way?

Absolutely. People read the newspapers that best fit what they like. People watched the TV channels that best suited their position. Some watched NTV, and some watched Channel One. Someone read “Kommersant”, and someone – the newspaper “Pravda”. In this case, social networks simply reproduced the same model, without expecting it.

But before, there was always a chance to get out of the bubble just by going outside and faced with the opposite point of view. Now literally everything is online, which means that there is very little chance of finding out that you are wrong.

There are curious American studies that show what life events can affect our worldview. First of all, college influences, it is there that a person first encounters people from radically different circles – people of a different ethnic group, a different social status, and other ideas.

And then – maybe something in the office will affect you, or maybe not – depending on where the person goes. But not social media. They are able to broaden their horizons in the early stages of personality formation, but then, unfortunately, people begin to strive for a closed world. This is human nature.

“Capitalism as it is”

In public space, foreign social networks are often accused of profiting from us and at the same time applying censorship to us. How do platforms make money on us?

This is an interesting point. Officially, Facebook does not sell advertising in Russia. Advertising is bought by individuals, or purchased by international advertising agencies for large brands, which simultaneously launch campaigns in dozens of countries. This includes launching a Russian-language campaign on Instagram or Facebook.

The second option is advertising through influencers. But often this is a rather gray income, it is very difficult to calculate how much Facebook gets from this ad. That is, we cannot objectively understand how much the Russian budget is receiving less.

Are the incomes of foreign IT giants in Russia comparable to those of Russian Internet holdings?

If we take the volume of advertising (of a foreign platform, for example, Facebook) that is officially running and bought in Russia – even by individuals, it turns out that this is a really large advertising platform. But I doubt that it will even enter the top ten in Russia. These revenues cannot be compared with the revenues of large Russian media holdings. There are different estimates. According to my personal estimates, a large site earns in the region of $ 15-20 million, nothing more. For a huge corporation, the amount is not the largest, but still decent money.

The Russian authorities have fought for years to get IT giants to open representative offices in the country. This was motivated by the inadmissibility of censorship of foreign social networks in relation to our citizens. And why is it really necessary: for political or economic reasons?

It sounds strange now, but it seems to me that everything depends on which one of the representatives of the authorities you ask. In my opinion, there is no clearly expressed target position of the Russian state as such in this matter. On the one hand, there is an international process of combating the erosion of the tax base (BEPS), in which Russia is involved. And Russia is preparing rules for the taxation of multinational companies, including technology companies. [Prime Minister Mikhail] Mishustin knows this well, when he was the head of the Federal Tax Service, he participated in this, and now his successor, Daniil Yegorov, is involved.

On the other hand, we are looking at Turkey and other countries where tech giants are opening offices. And we also want to, relatively speaking, someone to call if necessary. As one official told me in a conversation: “Let us have a person to whom you can always turn.”

What is the main complaint against foreign social networks from Russia?

The main complaint concerns moderation – they cannot cope with the volume of destructive content that needs to be removed. As for YouTube, although the authorities accuse the site of biased moderation, in fact, the reasons for the claims against them are more economic. In the case of YouTube, the government may be more interested in its revenues. That being said, YouTube's moderation policy is the talk of the town. She's really disgusting, she's really opaque. If you are blocked, it can be very difficult to get the truth out, especially if you are not a very famous person.

This is not the only problem with YouTube. Content filters for copyright work haphazardly, and there are also a large number of outright scammers who file complaints about content, claiming copyright – all the problems are countless. But, to be honest, I have no idea how to make the moderation policy on YouTube more transparent with the help of the laws of the Russian Federation.

Opening representative offices in Russia will put pressure on corporations in terms of moderation?

And Google (the company owns YouTube – approx. “Lenta.ru” ) has a representative office in Russia, which means that YouTube too. But somehow I did not notice a serious difference from companies that do not have representative offices in the country. I think that something else decides here, namely the market. Large foreign players should have local competitors.

Explain clearly where the direct relationship is. Why have they been talking in Russia for many years about the need to create their own YouTube, but this has not yet come true?

Very simple. There is one objective problem, why YouTube has no competitors in the world (with the exception of Chinese platforms, which have been gaining immense popularity recently). Countries around the world have adopted a ton of laws that force platforms to basically delete something at risk of being fined or blocked.

For example, the European Union recently approved a new anti-terrorism law: now prohibited content must be removed in an hour. Well, what company can completely remove something in an hour? Only the one that has the resources for this. A giant company like YouTube. They can throw a lot of money into it.

This is a strange paradox: on the one hand, we want certain laws to be observed on the Internet, on the other, we essentially shift the role of law enforcement to the platforms.

If internet giants are so omnipotent, why can't they handle moderation anyway? The giant Facebook with a multibillion-dollar audience has only a few tens of thousands of moderators, and all of them are taken out of the company's staff.

This is really not enough for such a volume of content. In addition, a moderator is a very low-paid job that causes irreparable harm to psychological health. Technological giants really do not register moderators on the staff – but these are features of labor law in the United States. Facebook is a California-based company, and California has extremely high health and safety requirements than the United States as a whole. Therefore, it is of course more profitable for them to hire contractors located outside the United States, who pay employees much lower salaries and who are not subject to various social security requirements.

Capitalism as it is. Moreover, there are still many Indian citizens living in the world who are happy to do this kind of work.

Why do owners of popular apps prefer to exploit people rather than create a perfect algorithm that will cope with moderation?

There is such a view from Silicon Valley, the view of a technocrat: sooner or later we will make perfect algorithms, and we will need fewer and fewer people. Only for some reason this future still does not come. It turns out that algorithms do not learn well either. People prepare a certain block of basic solutions for artificial intelligence. But they do it too badly. It's such a vicious circle; not the fact that it will be possible to break it, based on the current model of social networks.

How do you make the algorithms work better?

Some time ago, the head of Twitter Jack Dorsey announced that they are exploring the possibility of opening the social network for interaction with external developers, with external software. That is, in fact, he proposes to move from the current centralized model to a decentralized content distribution model.

Dorsey seems to be saying: let's give users and developers the tools to cope with the problems of the social network themselves. Because there are many developers in the world – let them invent. For example, they can come up with filters that will shape your customized feed. That is, in essence, you yourself will be able to filter content on social networks using your favorite recommendation algorithm. At the same time, the network will not be under the control of either the company itself or other organizations.

In other words, we honestly tell people, for example, that’s it, the company doesn’t handle unwanted content and will never do it, instead we leave everything at the mercy of the developers.

Is this a viable technology?

I think such a model is more viable, but it requires such a fundamental rethinking of the business! It's harder to manage, plus you open up your platform to a ton of other developers. This may have its advantages. But there may be disadvantages – for example, how to explain the feasibility of a fundamentally new model to shareholders?

This is still a project, and of an academic nature. Principles and tools that can scale to hundreds of millions of users have not yet been created.

“If you prohibit – explain why”

The year began with the fact that social networks showed how easily they can take and confine a person in isolation, even if it is a US president with a multimillion-dollar army of subscribers. How should you take what happened to Donald Trump in January?

It seems to me that we have seen a clash of the American principles of free speech, the first amendment to the constitution, with the principles of about the rest of the world. From the American point of view, the rights, including blocking someone on their platform, is a natural continuation of the first amendment.

You are not only free to say something on your site, you can also prohibit something there. In the rest of the world, this is treated differently – if you prohibit something, you have to explain why. In the rest of the world, the Internet is treated as a public space, not a private space. So they think in Europe, and in our country.

The Trump case is far from the last clash of ideals. Because, unbeknownst to most Americans, internal social media rules actually gravitate towards a European approach. This is a consequence of a clash within social networks themselves, between people who make decisions. They understand perfectly well that in order to work on the territory of the rest of the world, you need to play by the rules of this world.

This is a big philosophical question – who should adapt to whom: social networks should comply with the general rules of states, or, for example, they should comply with some general principles, say, the declaration of human rights. Perhaps if the platforms relied less on national laws and more on universal laws, there would be fewer such problems.

But how should an ordinary user perceive the situation? The platform deprives my companion of freedom of speech. Should I do something about it?

If there is an opportunity to vote with a wallet, then you need to use it. Of course, it's strange to talk about this in relation to free services. But among my acquaintances, for example, after the Trump incident, people began to switch to the Minds social network (a decentralized social network based on the blockchain – Lenta.ru ).

If something does not suit you, but at the same time do nothing, then everything will continue. By leaving the platform, people signal discontent.

Are user demarches able to influence social networks?

Is not a fact. But they can influence the fact that soon there will be a competitor for Twitter, who will be chosen by those who disagree with Twitter's policies.

Why have Google, Facebook and other tech giants just now become a problem not only for the whole world, but also for America itself? Antitrust proceedings are underway against these companies in the United States. Why had no one noticed before that they were enjoying a dominant position?

Well, first of all, historically, tech companies are loved by users. People can say as much as they want how bad Amazon is, that it pays workers so little, what horrible conditions they have in their warehouses. But it's so cool when you get parcels delivered free of charge in two days. And it's so easy to return them if needed. It is the same with other services. For a long time, while these services provided quality products to users, there was little negative. But over time, consumer negativity began to accumulate, it spilled over into the media, after which it became clear that, in fact, what the IT giants are doing is not healthy for the market, because they have become monopolists.

At the same time, if you look at some conditional New York Times newspaper, it wrote equally negatively about technology companies 15 years ago and now. It's just that now the emphasis has shifted, and this position is shared by a significant number of users.

The growth of Internet companies was inevitable due to the so-called network effects. They are that as a company gets bigger, costs go down rather than go up, as is the case in regular business. But discontent grew not because of monopoly per se, but when consumers began to suffer.

The US Congress was advised to split Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook to reduce their influence. Will it help?

Politicians are always tempted to do something loud, simple, and wrong. For example, to propose to split Facebook (in 2020 such a proposal was made by a subcommittee of the US Congress – approx. “Lenta.ru” ) or Google – let YouTube now be a separate company.

Will this really affect the competition and the market? Something I doubt. This is a real complex and complex problem – it lies in the plane of regulation of aggregators and in how they create markets around themselves, how they influence their suppliers and contractors. But politicians speak in slogans, hence the proposals to split the companies are taken. AT&T has split its time – let's split Facebook too. And that sounds good. As a result, it will turn out that the system will be decentralized, but the same companies and people will control the Internet market.

Why did the Americans get the whole world hooked on their apps?

I think that the spirit of adventurism and entrepreneurship that is characteristic of Americans played a role. Europe has historically specialized in engineering technology and large corporations that operate in real industry. A lot of talented European programmers primarily work for this industry. From here was born, for example, the SAP software, which is used to automate large industrial enterprises. European companies are specialists in industrial automation, they have few competitors here. This industry pulls off all those who could have started their own startup, but did not. It was more comfortable to leave to work for a European corporation. As a result, not a single Silicon Valley appeared in France or Britain. Including because of the very condescending attitude of the authorities to the Internet.

It's funny now to come across the statements of the French authorities in 1993-1994. They stated: “We have Minitel (the most popular means of telecommunication in France before the advent of the Internet – approx. Lenta.ru ). We don't need any internet! This is generally the Wild West with its own strange habits. All this is nonsense for the French nation. ” Unsurprisingly, when the first dot-com boom subsided, no companies akin to American tech giants emerged in Europe.

Now the situation is different. Now there are Berlin, London has – the largest starthaby (ecosystem, combining technological start-ups, expert support, and investors -. Comment “Lenta.ru”), in which the weight of exciting new companies appear. A kind, quite often narrow-minded, not always designed for individuals, mainly B2B (“business for business”).

Unlike Europe, we still have our own popular Internet products that can compete with Western ones.

On the sites of services Google, Facebook, Twitter, about 5.5 thousand materials prohibited in Russia have not yet been removed. This was stated by the deputy head of Roskomnadzor Vadim Subbotin at a meeting in the Federation Council.

“Only at the sites of the three largest IT services, Internet services that belong to Google, Facebook, Twitter, about 5.5 thousand of this kind of materials are still not deleted,” RIA Novosti quotes Subbotin as saying.

He noted that we are talking about materials that aim to incite national or extremist hatred, call for extremist activities and the use of violence.

Earlier it was reported that Roskomnadzor blocked more than 427 thousand prohibited materials in nine months.

The first carrier rocket, Nuri, was launched from the Naro cosmodrome in South Korea.

“Nuri” is a three-stage rocket (technical name KSLV-II) designed to launch an artificial satellite into Earth's orbit. If the program is successfully completed, the Republic of Korea will enter the elite club of world space states that are capable of independently producing and launching spacecraft into orbit.

Initially, the launch of the rocket was scheduled for today at 16:00 local time, but due to weather conditions it was postponed by one hour. Today's rocket flight is equipped with an imitation blank weighing one and a half tons.

If successful, space program officials and engineers plan to launch a real satellite next year. The cost of the KSLV-II rocket project was $ 1.8 billion. Development has been underway since 2010.

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Former US President Donald Trump announced the launch of the new TRUTH Social. According to him, the beta version of the service will start working in November 2021, and the full launch is scheduled for the first quarter of 2022. Trump's accounts are now blocked on all major social networks. The ban has been in effect since January 2021, when supporters of the ex-president tried to take over the Capitol during the inauguration of Joe Biden.

Trump's statement on the creation of the social network was published by the representative of the former American leader Liz Harrington on her Twitter.

Trump Media & Technology Group's (TMGT) mission is to create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back Silicon Valley tech companies that have used their monopoly power to silence America's opposition voices, it said.

The politician stressed that he decided to create a social network “to resist the tyranny of big technologies.”

According to Trump, many members of the Taliban (a terrorist organization banned in Russia) have Twitter accounts, while “your beloved American president has been silenced.”

“This is unacceptable,” said the billionaire.

In March 2021, Axios reported that Trump was in talks with several apps to create his own social network. In the summer of the same year, the ex-president launched the Gettr platform as an alternative to existing services and called it the goal of “protecting free speech.”

Earlier, The Secret wrote that Trump's accounts were blocked on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram after his supporters attacked the Capitol during the inauguration of Joe Biden in January 2021. According to the leadership of social networks, Trump's posts could provoke unrest and violence. The politician himself called the blocking a “shame” for the United States and filed a lawsuit against Twitter demanding to restore his profile. He accused the service of groundless censorship.

Photo: Pixabay, Pixabay License

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The democratic brand of Xiaomi – Redmi – officially presented the new flagship TVs Redmi Smart TV X 2022. In total, two models were announced, differing in display diagonal and, of course, in price.

The 55-inch TV will set you back $ 469 and the 65-inch model $ 547. New items are already available by pre-order, and they will go on retail sale on October 31st. New items received metal cases with narrow frames and screens with a resolution of 4K 3840 x 2160 pixels with 10-bit color and a coverage of the DCI-P3 color space of 94%.

Also stated is the response time in grayscale of 6.5 ms and an increased refresh rate of 120 Hz. Supports FreeSync Premium, Dolby Vision and MEMC technologies. Audio systems with four 12.5 W speakers, two air ducts and a sealed acoustic box with a capacity of 0.38 liters are responsible for the sound. There is also support for Dolby Atmos. And also today the iQOO Z5x smartphone was presented.

Source: Redmi

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Analysis of the expression of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor type α7 (shown in green) and Lypd6 (shown in red) in hippocampal neurons by confocal microscopy. The nucleus of the neuron is shown in blue (stained with Hoechst 33342). Scale 10 μm

Russian researchers were able to find a protein that inhibits acetylcholine receptors in the human brain. It turned out to be a three-loop protein, the Lypd6 protein. Additional study of its properties may lead to the discovery of pharmacological applications of this modulator. The researchers' article was published in the journal Frontiers in Cell And Development Biology.

Many receptors in the central nervous system have associated regulatory proteins expressed in specific neurons (Maher et al., 2017). Ancillary regulatory proteins have been described for the AMPA, NMDA, GABAA and ACh receptors. For example, the GPI-anchored protein Lynx1, which belongs to the Ly6 / uPAR family of three-finger proteins, interacts with the α7-type nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7-nAChR) and co-localizes with it in areas of the brain important for learning and memory, and is critical for neuronal loss. plasticity during brain development after birth.

In addition, Lypd6 is the so-called GPI-anchored protein of the Ly6 / uPAR family, expressed in the brain. Previously, several scientific laboratories have received data indicating that Lypd6 interacts with nAChR and may be involved in the transmission of cholinergic signals in the central nervous system. However, the specificity of the neuromodulator and the direction of modulation of nicotinic receptors (positive or negative) remained unexplored.

The researchers from the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, RAS, together with the staff of the Scientific Center of Neurology and the University of Leuven, for the first time studied the pharmacological spectrum of action of Lypd6, identified subtypes of nAChR, the targets of this neuromodulator, and determined the concentrations at which this neuromodulator specifically inhibits nAChR α7 and α3β4 types. Co-localization of Lypd6 with α7-nAChR was shown in neurons of the cortex and hippocampus.

In addition, for the first time, the authors were able to observe in neurons the colocalization of a member of the Ly6 / uPAR family with nAChR of the α3β4 type, which indicates that this subtype of nicotinic receptor may also possess auxiliary regulatory proteins.

The addition of the recombinant Lypd6 preparation to the medium bathing the surviving rat hippocampal slices significantly inhibited the choline-induced current on the α7-nAChR. In addition, like the three-finger α-bungarotoxin (the strongest neurotoxin from the venom of the Bungarus multicinctus snake, acting on α7-nAChR), Lypd6 inhibited long-term potentiation in the surviving sections of the hippocampus of mice, which means a negative effect on synaptic plasticity. These data indicate that Lypd6 suppresses the function of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain, as well as processes associated with their work.

Computer modeling of the interaction of Lypd6 with α7-nAChR predicted the binding site of the neuromodulator to the receptor. Comparative analysis of the interaction of Lynx1 and Lypd6 with the receptor made it possible to explain the positive and negative modulation of the receptor by these neuromodulators. Verification of the predicted site by site-directed mutagenesis with subsequent analysis of the activity of the resulting Lypd6 mutants will fill in the existing gaps in the description of the mechanisms underlying the regulation of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors.

The results obtained allow us to consider Lypd6 as an endogenous negative neuromodulator of the cholinergic system of the brain. At the same time, positive modulation of α7-nAChR by another neuromodulator, Lynx1, has been repeatedly shown earlier. Possibly, Lynx1 and Lypd6, both co-localized with α7-nAChR on neuronal membranes, represent a pair of positive and negative neuromodulators required to fine-tune cholinergic signaling in the brain. The positive and negative effects on synaptic plasticity imply that Lynx1 and Lypd6 may also modulate the processes involved in memory and learning in different ways.

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Odyssey towards the Trojans

Moscow. October 21. INTERFAX.RU – Scientists of the Ural Federal University (Ural Federal District), together with specialists from the Institute of Organic Synthesis of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have created an express method for detecting a dangerous toxin in food, the press service of the university reports. The research is published in the scientific journal Food Chemistry.

As noted in the message, the development “is distinguished by unprecedented accuracy of analysis.”

We are talking about the detection of nitrobenzene, a dangerous toxin that can contaminate honey and other popular foods.

Nitrobenzene is “an extremely dangerous compound with a strong carcinogenic and mutagenic effect”, which is difficult to neutralize chemically. The most widespread use of nitrobenzene is in the chemical industry as a solvent, but food can also be contaminated with the toxin. Honey is especially susceptible to this, because insecticides are used to protect hives and bees from ticks.

Of practical interest is the development of portable devices for the determination of nitrobenzene, since most of the methods for determining the level of the substance content in products require lengthy laboratory work.

“The sensitivity and accuracy of such analyzers is determined by the structure of the“ recognizer ”- the so-called receptor layer,” explains Alisa Kozitsina, director of the Innovation Center for Chemical and Pharmaceutical Technologies of the UrFU.

For example, university specialists have developed a synthetic receptor and created a prototype of a portable analyzer based on it.

“Electrochemical sensors are miniature, easy to manufacture and require an ultra-small amount of the analyzed product. Associate Professor of the Ural Federal University Tatyana Svalova notes that” the recognition system and the prototype of the electrochemical sensor have no direct analogs in the world. “

Using the new method, the specialists discovered unsafe amounts of nitrobenzene in the honey samples, which were missed during the analysis of the accepted methods.

“The development will be in demand not only in environmental monitoring and quality control of food products, but also in industry, for example, in the production of cosmetics,” the message says.