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Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today: Inflation hits three-year high; Researchers have developed a way to preserve fruits and vegetables; and Ripper Owens opens up about being erased by Judas Priest…🤐 

But first, our weekly poll!

Fruits and vegetables are only grown in certain regions, and that means the clock is ticking when it comes to transporting them to faraway places that want them. While special trucks and other technology are used to keep them fresh along the way, these factors ultimately drive costs up and aren’t 100% effective.

A natural gas called ethylene is mostly responsible for why fruits and vegetables will rot before they get to where they’re going, and researchers at the University of Copenhagen may have just invented a clay-based solution.

"Clay is an interesting material because it is natural, cheap, nontoxic and found everywhere—and we can absorb it safely into the body. Our thought was: Can we use chemistry and physics to modify clay so that it captures the gas and thus slows down the ripening process? We have succeeded in doing so," says Associate Professor Heloisa Bordallo from the Niels Bohr Institute, who led the study published in Applied Surface Science Advances.

Bordallo and team indeed engineered the clay to produce larger voids in its structure, allowing it to capture more ethylene gas without any escaping, ultimately preventing it from rotting the food.

A study published in PLOS Biology looked into the relationship between brain aging and metabolic health, and the researchers discovered the two act as separate biological processes, but both result in brain aging.

It sounds a little convoluted, but what it means is that the brain will age at a certain pace simply due to the passage of time, but the process can also be expedited by a failure to maintain good metabolic health.

The researchers looked at these two “axes” separately, with standard aging influencing brain health by impacting its structural integrity. Its outer layer will grow thinner, vascular function will deteriorate, and blood flow will slow within the brain’s vessels.

On the other hand, several metabolic factors—such as BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, and others—will converge to ultimately weaken the overall supply of blood to the brain, which can exacerbate and speed up the process of brain aging described on the first axis.

The researchers listed several biomarkers, including blood lipids, glucose levels, as well as BMI and blood pressure as indicative of the type of metabolic health factors that could drive brain aging under certain circumstances. They said further study is needed to determine courses of action to slow the process, or at least return it to a pace at which actual aging and brain aging are aligned.

Colossal Biosciences is the American company that defines itself as the solution to “de-extinction.” Its claim to fame rests in its founder, George Church, participating in the invention of the gene-editing platform CRISPR, along with his intent to revive the wooly mammoth.

The company very well may one day be able to accomplish the latter part, and given its self-described de-extinction goals, it makes quite a bit of sense for it to partner with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which is tasked with carrying out the provisions of the 1973 Endangered Species Act.

The department currently overseas the preservation of 1,662 domestic endangered species, and 638 foreign ones, but those numbers reflect an increase of 300% since 1985. The agency isn’t keeping up with the rate at which species are becoming threatened, largely due to a lack of funding, so it’s partnering up with Colossal Biosciences to fix the money issue.

“This collaboration will help advance our understanding of how biobanking and genomics can complement existing conservation tools and contribute to the recovery and long-term resilience of imperiled species,” U.S. FWS director Brian Nesvik said in a statement.

Tim “Ripper” Owens replaced Rob Halford as the singer of Judas Priest in 1996 and was featured on 1997’s Jugulator and 2001’s Demolition before being shown the door for Halford’s return in 2003.

If you’ve ever seen this movie Rockstar with Mark Wahlberg, then you’re probably familiar with the story of Ripper Owens. A superfan of the British metal band Steel Dragon, Wahlberg is tapped to replace their singer, and enjoys a meteoric rise to fame before being put in his place by the band, reminded that he’s just there to sing the songs, but not to really contribute.

It’s not directly based on the story of Ripper Owens, but it captures the gist of it, which is particularly apparent in the way Priest has ostensibly erased the fact that Owens ever existed as far as their story goes.

The Ripper years are almost completely ignored by the band. The only commercially available item that even acknowledges his existence is a $500 box set that includes his two albums, which Priest started selling last year.

Still, in a recent interview with Whiplash, he said he “had the time of [his] life” with them. “I always say Judas Priest was my college…they opened the doors for me and I took advantage of it…I was treated fantastic.

Quizmaster’s choice

You know the drill, Staker! It’s another Friday, so we’ve got a little bit of this and a little bit that—another round of à la carte for today’s trivia 😎