There is growing concern on Capitol Hill that the Food and Drug Administration will not do enough when it comes to e-cigarette manufacturers. According to an article in stat, “Congressional Democrats openly pressured acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Janet Woodcock to crack down on e-cigarette manufacturers Wednesday, with one powerful lawmaker blasting the agency for what they say is inaction on the issue. ‘Who is the cop on the beat to whom we entrust our children? It’s the Food and Drug Administration. And this agency has been timid and reluctant for way too long,’ said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate, who was testifying before the House hearing as a witness. ‘I worry the agency is going to fail again.’” Lawmakers and public health officials have been wary of the high levels of nicotine contained in E-Cigarettes. https://bit.ly/3zLc3aF

Anyone who thought that the United States was nearly finished with its covid-19 pandemic should think again. On the contrary, things appear to be on the verge of going the wrong way. According to the Associated Press, “As the U.S. emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, Missouri is becoming a cautionary tale for the rest of the country: It is seeing an alarming rise in cases because of a combination of the fast-spreading delta variant and stubborn resistance among many people to getting vaccinated. Intensive care beds are filling up with surprisingly young, unvaccinated patients, and staff members are getting burned out fighting a battle that was supposed to be in its final throes.” Considering America’s track record during the past year, there is good cause for concern. https://bit.ly/3zOUyWR

The famous denisovan cave continues to yield surprises ten years after it was first discovered. According to an article in the journal Science, “Working with another team of experts who had previously dated the layers of the cave, the researchers dug out 728 soil samples. After 2 years of analysis, in which they isolated and sequenced the samples, the researchers found human DNA in 175 of them. That makes the study ‘the largest and most systematic of its kind,’ says Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved in the work.” https://bit.ly/35ME4Rk

A new study coming out of Germany Is indicating that humans began to eat and rely on starchy Foods a lot earlier than was thought. it was initially believed that early foragers would gather for meat parties where they all Shared in their meals. according to the journal Nature, “Now that view is changing, thanks to researchers such as Laura Dietrich at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. Over the past four years, Dietrich has discovered that the people who built these ancient structures were fuelled by vat-fulls of porridge and stew, made from grain that the ancient residents had ground and processed on an almost industrial scale1. The clues from Göbekli Tepe reveal that ancient humans relied on grains much earlier than was previously thought — even before there is evidence that these plants were domesticated. And Dietrich’s work is part of a growing movement to take a closer look at the role that grains and other starches had in the diet of people in the past.” But what about those meat parties? https://go.nature.com/3d6zly0

Thanks for reading. Let’s be careful out there.