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The Immune System, The Gut Biome, And Obesity

Turns out it may not just be calories in, calories out.

We’ve been fattening cows with antibiotics since the 1950s, but we’re just now starting to understand the relationship between the types of bacteria in the bovine gut and how they impact weight. Turns out, that relationship might exist for us, too – and the fix may not be as simple as probiotics.

According to an article in The Atlantic …

“A lot of the recent research on probiotics suggests it’s really not easy to keep and sustain new communities,” Stephens says. The immune system could explain that. “It may well be that your immune response gets ‘stuck’ at an early age based on what you’ve exposed it to. Probiotics might not be enough to change a person’s microbiome, because your immune system determined early on that certain microbes are either appropriate or inappropriate in your gut.”

Read the rest or don’t here.

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How William Gibson’s Long-Lost Alien 3 Script Became 2019’s Most Intriguing Audio Drama

I’m intrigued enough that I will be making a purchase very shortly. From The Verge …

Audible Studios’ new audio drama Alien III by William Gibson offers one of those alternate paths for the Alien series. Gibson, the author of Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, has his own vision of what happened after Ripley, Hicks, Bishop, and Newt nuked LV-426 from orbit in Aliens. What was once a discarded draft has, in the hands of writer and director Dirk Maggs, become a fleshed-out audio production featuring Aliens stars Michael Biehn (as Hicks, the Marine who showed Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley how to fire a high-powered gun in Aliens) and Lance Henriksen (as Bishop, the “artificial person” who changes Ripley’s mind about working with synthetic life forms). Close your eyes, and it’s like slipping into an alternate universe in which this is the third Alien film, rather than the one we know.

You can pick it up here.