All posts tagged: promising

This common wildflower has become a promising source to fight antibiotic-resistant infections

This common wildflower has become a promising source to fight antibiotic-resistant infections

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the Well Enough newsletter with Harry Bullmore for tips on living a healthier, happier and longer life Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Long before we had modern antibiotics to rely on, people often turned to traditional medicines from plants to treat infections. The root of tormentil (Potentilla erecta), a small yellow wildflower that grows across Ireland, the UK and Europe, was used for centuries in Irish and European traditional medicine. It was used to treat wounds, sore throats, diarrhoea and gum disease. These traditional uses suggested that tormentil could contain compounds powerful enough to kill microbes. Our latest research has now shown that not only does tormentil have antimicrobial activity, it may also be powerful enough to fight microbes that are resistant to modern antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance is a growing global threat. This occurs when bacteria evolve to survive the drugs used to treat common infections. This makes some infections very difficult and sometimes impossible to treat. Antimicrobial resistance could be pushing us …

Scientists discover promising way to counter Alzheimer’s disease and age‑related memory loss

Scientists discover promising way to counter Alzheimer’s disease and age‑related memory loss

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the Well Enough newsletter with Harry Bullmore for tips on living a healthier, happier and longer life Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Most people think of Alzheimer’s disease as an illness of aging. But in fact, the brain changes that characterize it begin much earlier – sometime around the third decade of life. In the earliest of these changes, a tangled version of a protein called tau starts building up in a tiny region deep in the brain involved in sleep, attention and alertness, called the locus coeruleus. Tau later spreads to the rest of the brain. Developing tau tangles doesn’t mean a person has Alzheimer’s disease – in fact, it happens to nearly everyone to varying degrees. But because these changes start in the locus coeruleus, some brain researchers – myself included – see this area as a canary in the coal mine for developing Alzheimer’s disease We are exploring whether stopping or slowing down tau tangles in this brain region, or …

Tina Fey Hosts Promising Spinoff

Tina Fey Hosts Promising Spinoff

Published by Daniella Wilson

Saturday Night Live UK had its looooooooooooong-awaited premiere this weekend, and let’s get a couple of obvious jokes out of the way. First of all, congratulations to Saturday Night Live UK on marking the last week nobody will be able to say the show used to be funnier! Saturday Night Live UK The Bottom Line Good cast, spotty writing — like the mothership. Airdate: Premiered Saturday, March 21 (Sky One)Cast: Hammed Animashaun, Ayoade Bamgboye, Larry Dean, Celeste Dring, George Fouracres, Ania Magliano, Annabel Marlow, Al Nash, Jack Shep, Emma Sidi, Paddy Young But also, the writers had 51 years to write jokes for the first episode and this was what they came up with? Hilarious, I know. But given that Tina Fey began her monologue by joking that she’s the youngest person to ever host Saturday Night Live UK, easy punchlines are in play. While it’s thoroughly baffling that it took Lorne Michaels this long to franchise one of American television’s most beloved and lucrative formats, the transplantation of Saturday Night Live for British audiences …

As people look for ways to make new friends, here are the apps promising to help

As people look for ways to make new friends, here are the apps promising to help

Published by skeptic

In recent years, people have been increasingly looking for new ways to form platonic connections, as loneliness and social isolation have become more prevalent. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General went so far as to label this issue a public health crisis. Remote workers, who miss the everyday interactions found in an office, and younger individuals eager to create their adult social circles based on shared interests and hobbies, are among those seeking meaningful friendships. Thanks to online dating apps, the stigma associated with finding connections online has largely faded away. This has welcomed a new wave of apps focused on fostering friendships and building local communities. According to estimates from Appfigures, over a dozen local-focused friendship apps have collectively generated approximately $16 million in consumer spending in the U.S. so far this year. Some notable examples include Timeleft, Meet5, and Bumble’s BFF. Additionally, these apps have garnered approximately 4.3 million downloads thus far in 2025. The apps aim to provide a less awkward solution than, for instance, approaching a stranger at the gym or …

Mill Media asks for subscribers first, promising launch later in Leeds

Mill Media asks for subscribers first, promising launch later in Leeds

Published by Sam Flores

Leeds city centre. Picture: Christopher Chambers/Shutterstock Mill Media is set to expand to Leeds on the condition that it hits 500 paying subscribers for the new, unnamed title. “If we can get 500 people to pledge to support us, then we will launch the title,” said Daniel Timms, head of commercial at Mill Media. Users are offered the option to sign up for a month or a year, and will not be charged until the title is launched. “We think any sustainable future for local journalism is via paid subscriptions. We want to know that there are enough people in Leeds or the wider West Yorkshire region who are willing to support us to make it happen.” Leeds would be the seventh brand from the local newsletter publisher to be launched and the third to be launched on Ghost and not Substack, where its network of titles originated.   A team has not yet been hired for the launch, but it is expected to start out with two full-time staff, said Timms. Similar to the …

Promising new drug for preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication : NPR

Promising new drug for preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

“For me, a baby is a blessing,” says Abigail Hendricks, who benefited from a new drug trial for preeclampsia. Here she is with her almost 9-month-old, Hayden Tommy Trenchard for NPR hide caption toggle caption Tommy Trenchard for NPR It was the fall of 2024 when Abigail Hendricks learned she was pregnant with her fifth child. She was glowing with excitement. “For me, a baby is a blessing,” says Hendricks. “They are cute. They are precious. And they are a gift from God.” But Hendricks, who was 33 at the time and living in Cape Town, South Africa, would later learn that her growing baby was also a grave health risk to her. Hendricks already had high blood pressure. Soon, the headaches began. From time to time, her vision would blur. Then protein started showing up in her urine. “I kept on fighting,” she recalls. “I did go to church. I pray in the morning. I pray at night for my baby to be safe and for me to be safe.” Her doctors put her …

Politics Home | Reform Councillors Say Party Shouldn’t Repeat Mistake Of Promising Tax Cuts At This Year’s Local Elections

Politics Home | Reform Councillors Say Party Shouldn’t Repeat Mistake Of Promising Tax Cuts At This Year’s Local Elections

Published by Sam Flores

Reform UK is beginning to think about changing tack on council tax (Alamy) 3 min read3 hr Reform UK councillors have told PoliticsHome that the party should not repeat the 2025 error of promising tax cuts heading into the May local elections. One Reform councillor said there are “lessons to be learned” for Nigel Farage’s party in how local authorities it won last year have struggled to match the rhetoric of lowering council tax. Earlier this month, a Reform UK source admitted to PoliticsHome that the party’s struggle to lower taxes at the local level up to now should be seen as “a learning curve” and a lesson for the party about the dangers of “overpromising and underdelivering”. Reform UK, which continues to lead national opinion polls, made a significant electoral breakthrough at last year’s local elections, winning control of 12 local authorities nationwide. Many of its candidates went into polling day pledging council tax cuts. However, since entering office, they have encountered local government finances under severe strain, and a majority of councils controlled by Farage’s party have now formally proposed potential council …

The Download: spying on the spies, and promising climate tech

The Download: spying on the spies, and promising climate tech

Published by skeptic

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet the man hunting the spies in your smartphone In April 2025, Ronald Deibert left all electronic devices at home in Toronto and boarded a plane. When he landed in Illinois, he bought a new laptop and iPhone. He wanted to reduce the risk of having his personal devices confiscated, because he knew his work made him a prime target for surveillance. “I’m traveling under the assumption that I am being watched, right down to exactly where I am at any moment,” Deibert says.  Deibert directs the Citizen Lab, a research center he founded in 2001 to serve as “counterintelligence for civil society.” Housed at the University of Toronto, it’s one of the few institutions that investigate cyberthreats exclusively in the public interest, and in doing so, it has exposed some of the most egregious digital abuses of the past two decades. For many years, Deibert and his colleagues have held up the …

AI is promising to revolutionise how we diagnose mental illness

AI is promising to revolutionise how we diagnose mental illness

Published by skeptic

The last big breakthrough in treating depression was all the way back in the 1980s. That was when Prozac, the first SSRI antidepressant, was released. It and its subsequent copycats soon swept the globe, and hundreds of millions of people have now taken this kind of medication. But while three-quarters of people say the pills have helped them feel better, they don’t work for everyone. With rising rates of depression – and no major treatment advances since the advent of SSRIs – it seems almost inevitable that some hope that AI can be psychiatry’s next big thing. The caveats are well known. Chatbots are only as good as the data they are trained on, have our own biases baked in and are prone to errors described by some as “hallucinations”. This week, we have news of a study that found that some of the best known AI models fail to give adequate advice for 60 per cent of queries relating to women’s health. But AI could finally bring some much-needed objectivity to the slippery issue …

Pope Leo announces second consistory, promising yearly gatherings of cardinals

Pope Leo announces second consistory, promising yearly gatherings of cardinals

Published by Sam Flores

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — As Pope Leo XIV’s first extraordinary consistory, or gathering of cardinals, came to a close, he announced plans to hold a second one in June on the feast day of Sts. Peter and Paul, and once every year, signifying plans to further include cardinals in the leadership of the Catholic Church. About 170 cardinals met at the Vatican on Wednesday and Thursday (Jan. 7 and 8). They focused on themes of synodality and evangelization — topics they discussed divided into 21 groups seated around tables. Representatives for nine of the groups — which included members of the curia, voting cardinals and nuncios — briefed the pope on the discussions after each session. All other groups sent their reflections to the pope via email. “The pope did more listening than talking,” said Cardinal Pablo Virgilio Siongco David, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, during a press conference at the Vatican on Thursday evening. He said that Leo brought a notebook to the meeting, leading David to believe that the …