Conotoxin- A Filipino Scientist Discovery

From My Science Readings This Week-

Filipino scientist Angel Alcala was also involved in groundbreaking marine research that led to the discovery of conotoxin — a potent compound found in the venom of cone snails from Philippine waters.

Conotoxin became the basis for Ziconotide, a non-opioid painkiller 1,000 times stronger than morphine, used for chronic pain in cancer and other severe conditions.

His work not only helped preserve marine ecosystems but also contributed to life-saving medicine around the world.

Meanwhile, Did you Know That.....

Did you know there's a bridge that seems to float over the water for nearly 24 miles?

In the state of Louisiana, USA , you'll find the incredible Lake Pontchartrain Causeway – a structure that fascinates both engineers and travelers alike.

Cool facts about it:

• It's approximately 38.4 kilometers (23.8 miles) long , making it one of the longest bridges over continuous water in the world.

• It consists of two parallel roadways , built in different decades: the first in 1956, and the second in 1969.

• It connects Metairie (near New Orleans) to Mandeville, linking the southern and northern shores of Lake Pontchartrain.

• The bridge was designed to cut travel time and offer a faster commute for thousands of daily drivers.

• It's widely used by people who live north of the lake and work in the New Orleans area .

Fun facts & curiosities:

• In the middle of the bridge, the lake is so wide that you can’t see land – it feels like driving across the ocean!

• It's supported by over 9,000 concrete pilings , ensuring solid stability.

• The bridge has been featured in world records and praised for its engineering .

• It has toll booths, regular patrols, and strict safety protocols for travelers.

• It’s not just a bridge – it’s a symbol of connection and smart urban planning .

A true example of how infrastructure can connect communities while offering a unique visual experience.

Source: Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission (GNOEC)

Lastly, Bad Breaking News on US Tourism:

Donald Trump destroys a crucial piece of the American economy as tourism to the United States dramatically plummets due to his escalating fascism — down 12% from last year.

And it gets even worse... According to the U.S. International Trade Administration, the number of tourists visiting the United States from Western Europe dropped by 7% in March. The largest group, tourists from the United Kingdom, dropped by 14%.

Ireland was down by 27%. German tourism decreased by 28%, perhaps connected to the fact that MAGA oligarch Elon Musk has spent a great deal of time promoting the far-right German AFD party.

Spain and Norway both dropped by 25%. Switzerland decreased by 25%. Denmark dropped a jaw-dropping 34% — a likely result of Trump's deranged efforts to seize Greenland, which is a an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Making all of this worse are the horror stories emerging of innocent tourists being terrorized and deported by ICE officers inflamed by Trump's rhetoric.

Travel writer Eoghan Corry told The Irish Times that there is "an intense uncertainty" among participants at a conference for American travel operators.

“The German market is very important to the US, but there has been immense publicity in Germany about border control," he added, explaining that social media is "full of cases" of European travelers being detained and questioned at US borders.

To the rest of the world, America is becoming an uglier and crueler place so it's no wonder that foreign tourists are choosing to spend their vacation money elsewhere.

The people hurt most by this tourism slump are obviously American business owners and vendors who rely on tourists to drive their profits. Once again, Donald Trump has inflicted economic suffering on the American people and given us nothing in return.

Bridge Most Popular Card Game According to ChatGPT

My Query: Is bridge one of the most popular card game

ChatGPT said:  Bridge is one of the most popular and respected card games in the world, though its popularity varies by region and age group. It has a strong following due to its complexity, strategic depth, and social aspects. Here's a quick breakdown:

Reasons for Its Popularity:

• Strategic depth: Often compared to chess for the mind games and tactics involved.

• Competitive scene: Includes international tournaments and professional players.

• Social tradition: Long history in clubs, especially among older adults and retirees.

Comparisons to Other Card Games:

• Globally, games like Poker and UNO may have broader mainstream appeal because they’re simpler to learn.

• Bridge, however, is often considered the pinnacle of trick-taking games in terms of complexity and skill.

While bridge may not be the most casually played card game today, especially among younger generations, it remains a prestigious and widely played game among enthusiasts.

Would you like a list of the most popular card games worldwide for comparison?

---

🔝 Top Mainstream Card Games (Global Popularity)

1. Poker (especially Texas Hold’em)

   • Popular in casinos, online platforms, and home games

   • Played competitively and casually

2. UNO

   • Easy to learn, family-friendly

   • Technically a proprietary card game, not played with a standard deck

3. Solitaire (Klondike, Spider, etc.)

   • Single-player, popular on computers and mobile apps

4. Blackjack

   • Extremely popular in casinos worldwide

   • Fast-paced and easy to learn

🧠 Strategy & Skill-Based Card Games

5. Bridge

   • Complex partnership game

   • Played in clubs, tournaments, and online (e.g., BBO – Bridge Base Online)

6. Hearts

   • Trick-taking game played casually or online

   • Included with many computer operating systems

7. Spades

   • Team-based trick-taking game

   • Especially popular in the United States

8. Euchre

   • Trick-taking game with a strong regional following, especially in the Midwest U.S. and Canada

🌏 Regionally Popular Card Games

9. Rummy / Gin Rummy (Global)

   • Combines matching and sequence strategies

   • Many variants exist

10. Durak (Russia and Eastern Europe)

• National card game of Russia

11. Scopa / Briscola (Italy)

• Played with traditional Italian decks

12. Go-Stop / Hwatu (Korea)

• Played with colorful Korean hanafuda cards

13. Pusoy / Tong-its (Philippines)

• Popular gambling and social card games

Would you like a list focusing just on trick-taking games like bridge?

ChatGPT said: Here’s a list of the most popular trick-taking card games, including both global and regional favorites. Trick-taking games involve players competing to win “tricks” (rounds), often based on suit and rank.

🧠 Strategic & International Trick-Taking Games

1. Bridge

   • The gold standard of trick-taking games

   • Played by partnerships, with bidding and complex scoring

   • International tournaments and strong online presence

2. Spades

   • Team game like bridge, but with simpler bidding and scoring

   • Popular in the U.S., especially among younger players online

3. Hearts

   • No partnerships; players avoid taking certain tricks

   • Well-known due to inclusion in early Windows computers

4. Euchre

   • Shorter, fast-paced team game

   • Popular in the U.S. Midwest and Canada

5. Pinochle

   • Played in teams or solo

   • Combines trick-taking with melds (specific card combinations)

   • Popular among older generations in the U.S. and parts of Europe

🌍 Regionally Popular Trick-Taking Games

6. Durak (Russia)

   • Russia’s most popular card game

   • Asymmetrical play: attacker vs. defender

7. Tute (Spain/Italy/Latin America)

   • Traditional game often played with Spanish-suited cards

8. Belote (France)

   • National card game of France

   • Played with a 32-card deck; includes bidding and trumps

9. Skat (Germany)

   • Considered the national game of Germany

   • Very deep strategy, played by 3 players

10. Oh Hell / Contract Whist (UK & global)

• Players must predict exactly how many tricks they will take

• Popular party game with flexible player counts

🃏 Honorable Mentions

• Sheepshead (Germany/U.S. Midwest)

• Call Bridge (India, Nepal)

• Pedra (Portugal)

• Twenty-eight / 29 (India, Bangladesh)

Would you like a visual chart comparing these games based on complexity or popularity?

ChatGPT said:  Here's a chart comparing trick-taking card games by complexity and popularity. Bridge ranks highest in complexity and remains quite popular, while games like Durak and Spades balance both simplicity and widespread appeal. For Details visit: 

https://chateaudumer.blogspot.com/2025/01/do-you-like-to-play-games-of-skill.html

Discovery of a Lost Human Lineage in Colombia

Scientists just found remains from a lost human lineage. They are genetically unrelated to any living human.

A remarkable mystery has emerged from the highlands of Colombia, where scientists analyzing 6,000-year-old human remains uncovered DNA unlike any ever seen.

These ancient individuals, who once lived in the Bogotá Altiplano, appear to have no direct connection to any known modern or ancient South American population.

Though they may have shared cultural or linguistic ties with Chibchan language speakers in the region, their genetic signature is a biological outlier—offering no known descendants or traceable relatives.

Researchers believe these people could represent a "lost lineage" that once spread through the Isthmo-Colombian area, a vital land bridge between North and South America. Over millennia, their genes may have been diluted through mixing with other populations—or they may have vanished entirely. Their existence challenges current models of early migration in the Americas, suggesting that the peopling of the continent was more complex than previously thought.

More genomic research may eventually decode their story—but for now, they remain an enigma from deep time.

Meanwhile, Did you Know that....

Studies show that even when just one person in a relationship prays for the wellbeing of the other, there are detectable positive effects.

Lastly, Did you know that....

Suzuki has officially launched MOQBA, a four-legged robotic transport assistant designed to navigate cities with ease. Priced at $3,000, this AI-powered robot dog can move over stairs, rough terrain, and tight spaces, offering futuristic mobility solutions.

Designed for personal transport and cargo carrying, MOQBA blends robotics with Suzuki’s engineering expertise, making urban travel more accessible and adaptable. Whether it’s assisting with deliveries or serving as a smart mobility companion, this groundbreaking tech could change the way we move through cities.

Abbreviation, Acronym and Initialism

Acronyms and initialisms (when the letters in an abbreviation are pronounced individually instead of as a word) can make our daily conversations quicker and more efficient, but only if they’re easily understood. The examples above are obvious and well known, but there are also not-so-obvious acronyms, as well as words you might not have known were acronyms. If you’ve ever wanted to get certified as a scuba diver, for example, you could have said instead: “I want to get certified as a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus diver.” 

Words such as “scuba” and “radar” (RAdio Detection And Ranging) are so widespread and commonly used that they’re listed in the dictionary as standard words. Here are some other acronyms you may not be familiar with:

1. BASE jump - Building, Antenna, Span, Earth

BASE (or base) jumping which involves making a parachute jump from a fixed point, rather than an airplane was developed in the late 1970s. A skydiver named Carl Boenish coined the acronym “BASE,” with each letter representing the different things from which jumpers could launch themselves: buildings, antenna towers, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs or other rock formations).

2. CAPTCHA - Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart

This relatively young acronym appears all over the web when someone is trying to log in to a site or make a payment, for example. Coined by a cryptographer, “captcha” is a deliberate pun on “capture” and describes an authentication system whose purpose is to prevent the automated misuse of a website. (A “Turing test” is a test of a computer’s ability to display intelligence, named for mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing.)

3. LASER - Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation

With usages ranging from a laser light show at a rock concert, to a professor’s laser pointer, to laser-beam special effects in films, the acronym “laser,” first coined in 1960, describes any device that produces an intense, narrow beam of light, either continuously or in pulses, by exciting atoms and molecules. The laser device, as well as its acronym, came after the device known as a “maser,” standing for “microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.”

4. TASER - Tom A. Swift’s Electric Rifle

Though it sounds similar to “laser” and “maser,” “taser” is the proprietary name for a non-lethal weapon developed by American inventor Jack Cover in the 1970s. The weapon fires a cluster of electrified barbs attached to battery-charged wires, which causes temporary paralysis. The name comes from a science fiction book series about an inventor named Tom Swift that Cover enjoyed as a child.

5. YAHOO - Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle

The name of the popular search engine Yahoo! is a good example of a backronym, or an acronym deliberately created to spell out a particular word. The word “yahoo” was invented by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels, but the search engine founders chose it as their business name because it was easy to pronounce and remember. They later developed a slightly irreverent phrase for the acronym that nonetheless served as an accurate description for their search engine. “Hierarchical” referred to the arrangement of directory layers of the Yahoo! database, while “officious” described the office workers using the database. “Oracle” was intended to mean “a source of truth and wisdom.”

Meanwhile, here's a list for your information: 

https://www.wordgenius.com/5-acronyms-that-make-your-life-easier/Xr0yWBPAJQAG8w9x?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3069991696

Meanwhile, Did you know that....

Stanford University tops the list of the best U.S. colleges in the latest WSJ/College Pulse rankings.

Unlike other school rankings, this list emphasizes one point: How well did the college prepare students for financial success? More than any other factor, it rewards the boost an institution provides to its graduates’ salaries, beyond an estimate of what they could have expected from attending any college.

Beyond the marquee names, the rankings’ distinct methodology highlights some institutions that don’t have as much name recognition but still help their students achieve remarkable success.

Babson College, the small Wellesley, Mass., school focused on business and entrepreneurship retained its No. 2 spot from last year. Claremont McKenna College, near Los Angeles, clocked in at No. 6, and Davidson College, near Charlotte, N.C., ranked 10th.

The University of California, Berkeley, is the best-ranked public school, at No. 7 overall, and five other public schools from the state cracked the top 25.

See our full overall ranking and explore other rankings focused on student experiences, salary impact, social mobility and best value. :link: 

https://on.wsj.com/4nuBztf

Human Intelligence, Memory and Reasoning Peak Between Ages 55 to 60.

Forget the myth that your brain slows after 40, new neuroscience research suggests that human intelligence, memory, and reasoning actually peak between ages 55 and 60.

Using large-scale cognitive data and brain imaging, scientists found that older adults often outperform younger ones in pattern recognition, decision-making, and emotional stability. This “late-life cognitive bloom” is attributed to decades of neural connections and life experience that strengthen the brain’s executive networks.

Rather than fading with age, the brain seems to optimize itself for wisdom, empathy, and strategic thinking, a hopeful reminder that mental power evolves rather than declines. The study reshapes how society views aging: not as a loss of ability, but as the age of mastery.

Meanwhile, Did you know that.....

A simple daily habit can transform a child’s entire future. Research shows that reading to your child for just twenty minutes a day exposes them to nearly 1.8 million words every year, an extraordinary head start in life. Those stories, voices, and words aren’t just entertainment; they’re nourishment for the growing brain.

When parents read aloud, neurons spark, language centers strengthen, and imagination expands. It builds memory, vocabulary, empathy, and focus, all skills that shape academic success and emotional resilience later on. Even infants benefit from hearing the rhythm of language before they can speak, absorbing sound patterns that prepare them for reading and communication.

The science behind this is powerful. Children who are read to regularly show higher IQ levels, better listening comprehension, and stronger emotional bonds with their caregivers. Each story shared becomes a bridge,connecting hearts, shaping identity, and nurturing confidence.

And it doesn’t take much. Just twenty minutes a day, a bedtime story, a morning rhyme, or an afternoon adventure,can change how a child sees the world and themselves within it. Those minutes add up to millions of words, thousands of ideas, and endless possibilities.

In a fast-paced digital world, reading remains one of the purest and most profound acts of love. Open a book, share a story, and watch a mind unfold.

My Food For Thought For Today:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/3126373610857880

Lastly, Filipino Talents in the late 1920's...

In 1928, a group of five young Filipino debaters toured US universities to battle American youth on the issue of Philippine independence. The Pinoy team crushed debaters from Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Utah, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, George Washington University, Indiana University, and the University of Wisconsin. When they got to Miami University in Ohio, their reputation preceded them; and they were asked to give speeches instead of debate.

FRONT L-R: Deogracias Puyat (brother of Gil Puyat and future lawyer from Pampanga), Carlos P. Romulo (future diplomat and statesman from Tarlac) Teodoro Evangelista (future President of FEU and Secretary of Education from Bulacan)

BACK L-R: Pedro Camus (from Manila), Jacinto C. Borja (future ambassador to Japan and governor of Bohol)