Decaf wordt vaak weggezet als een zielig kopje koffie zonder kick. Maar nieuw onderzoek laat zien dat cafeïnevrije koffie iets doet wat gewone koffie niet kan: het geheugen verbeteren.

Onderzoekers van University College Cork zochten 31 mensen die normaal drie tot vijf koppen koffie per dag dronken. Ze moesten twee weken stoppen. Daarna ging de ene helft terug naar gewone koffie, de andere helft kreeg decaf. Niemand wist wat hij of zij dronk.

Wat verbeterde er?

Toen de koffie terug op het menu kwam, rapporteerden beide groepen minder stress en minder impulsiviteit. De drinkers van gewone koffie zagen ook een verbetering bij angst en aandacht.

De decafdrinkers lieten bovendien iets zien waar de cafeïnegroep niet toe in staat was: zij scoorden beter op twee geheugentests, met woorden en met locaties.

Darm-hersen-as

Volgens de onderzoekers kunnen je darmen hier iets mee te maken hebben. Koffie bevat meer dan duizend stoffen en cafeïne is er maar één van. Ook zitten er polyfenolen in, plantaardige stoffen waar darmbacteriën graag hun tanden in zetten.

Uit ontlastingsmonsters bleek dat de samenstelling van de darmflora veranderde tijdens de twee weken zonder koffie. Toen de koffie terugkwam, veranderde die opnieuw, ook bij de decafdrinkers.

Het resultaat verraste ook onderzoeksleider en neurowetenschapper John Cryan. In een video over de studie zei hij: "Het meest verrassende vond ik dat decaf, toen we de koffie terugbrachten, óók zulke spannende effecten had."

Nog niet je hele koffieroutine omgooien

Cryan benadrukt dat het om een klein experiment gaat. Met 31 deelnemers kun je niet alles wat we over koffie weten omgooien, er is meer onderzoek nodig om betrouwbare conclusies te trekken. Wel is het een reden om decaf serieuzer te nemen dan voorheen.

Bron: Nature Communications – Habitual coffee intake shapes the gut microbiome and modifies host physiology and cognition

SEOUL (ANP/RTR/BLOOMBERG) - Zuid-Korea roept zijn ambassadeur terug uit Oekraïne. Dat meldt het land te midden van een diplomatieke rel met Kyiv.

De landen liggen al enige dagen diplomatiek overhoop. Zo is er strijd over woorden van de Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky. Die meldde onlangs dat twee door Oekraïne aan het front gevangengenomen Noord-Koreanen waren uitgeleverd aan Zuid-Korea. Dat kwam hem op kritiek te staan, omdat volgens Seoul vertrouwelijkheid was afgesproken rond die uitlevering.

Ook klonken er geluiden vanuit Oekraïne dat Zuid-Korea Rusland indirect zou voorzien van brandstof en zo de oorlog tegen Oekraïne zou faciliteren. Dit na berichtgeving van The Guardian dat in Koreaanse havens brandstof was overgeslagen die uiteindelijk in Rusland belandde. Een adviseur van Zelensky noemde zulke transporten "scherp contrasterend" met Seouls houding wat betreft schepen waartegen sancties zijn opgelegd. Zuid-Korea weerspreekt de claims en zegt te zullen optreden als er illegale ladingen zijn verscheept.

BAKOE (ANP) - Judoka Sanne van Dijke is op de WK judo in Bakoe (Azerbeidzjan) doorgedrongen tot de achtste finales in de klasse tot 70 kilogram. De winnares van het brons vorig jaar op de WK in Boedapest won in Bakoe haar eerste twee partijen. Nadat ze in de eerste ronde afrekende met Celinda Corozo uit Ecuador, volgde daarna een zege op de Kroatische Lara Cvjetko, de huidige aanvoerster van de wereldranglijst in de klasse tot 70 kilogram.

Margit de Voogd, die in dezelfde gewichtsklasse uitkomt, strandde in de eerste ronde. Ze verloor van de Zwitserse Gioia Vetterli.

Tot nog toe heeft de Nederlandse ploeg nog geen eremetaal behaald op de WK in Bakoe. Joanne van Lieshout verloor woensdag in de klasse tot 63 kilogram de strijd om het brons van de Mongoolse Enkhriilen Lkhagvatogoo. Amber Gersjes (tot 48 kg), Naomi van Krevel (-52 kg) en debutante Shannon van de Meeberg (-57 kg) werden de dagen daarvoor in een vroeg stadium uitgeschakeld.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De Autoriteit Consument & Markt (ACM) heeft donderdag een voorstel gepresenteerd voor tijdafhankelijke nettarieven voor huishoudens en bedrijven met een kleine aansluiting. Dat betekent dat huishoudens meer naar gebruik gaan betalen en worden gestimuleerd om bijvoorbeeld elektrische auto's op een rustig moment op te laden. Dit moet de ruimte op het volle stroomnet vergroten.

ROTTERDAM (ANP) - Het hoogheemraadschap van Schieland en de Krimpenerwaard trekt vanaf 2028 jaarlijks 5 miljoen euro uit voor de aanpak van Amerikaanse rivierkreeften. Het schap zet het geld in voor maatregelen die het watersysteem beter bestand maken tegen rivierkreeften en het wegvangen van de dieren.

Het schap heeft besloten de miljoenen vrij te maken voor de bestrijding van Amerikaanse rivierkreeften, nadat daarover een motie was aangenomen. "Het is nog te vroeg om te zeggen hoe de aanpak en de samenwerking met andere partijen er precies gaan uitzien. Dat moet nog worden uitgekristalliseerd", zegt een woordvoerster.

Het hoogheemraadschap wijst erop dat achteruitgang van de waterkwaliteit grotendeels is toe te schrijven aan de invasie van de Amerikaanse rivierkreeften. "Deze dieren zorgen voor overlast en schade. Ze graven gangen in oevers, vernielen waterplanten, eten sloten kaal, planten zich snel voort en verstoren het natuurlijke evenwicht."

Originally scheduled for Oct. 10-11 at Gazprom Arena, Ye’s shows were canceled late last month.

Virgil, Texas, isn't real ... It's a backwoods Brigadoon on the edge of exurban creep, suspended between the shopping malls and semiconductor factories of our modern civilization and the last vestiges of the open plains. Virgil is a myth, and like all American myths, it's steeped in the tension between our desire for freedom and the capitalist conformity obstructing our horizon like the drab, prefabricated metal buildings of which, as True Stories says, Texas is the leading producer.

Teams have always symbolized division within America. And the Fever have come to prominence during a time of dark political intensity

It’s over for now, but no professional sports team spent more time receiving and drawing attention to itself than did the Indiana Fever this season. The Fever has broken, the team eliminated by the defending champion Las Vegas Aces for the second straight season, but Indiana succeeded in being the WNBA’s canary in the coal mine, embodying both the obvious and unintended consequences of rapid growth, while also allowing themselves to be a season-long distraction: part-time professional basketball team, part-time right-wing culture war centerpiece. Less than a decade ago, Atlanta and Minneapolis were praised for their unified political stances. Today, Trumpism has replaced social justice as the defining characteristic of the league – and as the curtain closed on the 2026 WNBA regular season, Indiana stood at its epicenter.

The Fever were the most polarizing team in professional sports, known less for their basketball than their culpability in pulling the league from its old cultural identity as a Black/queer league into the current ugliness of the Magasphere – a calculated and dangerous path to popularity. There was the basketball of the WNBA, and then there was the Indiana Fever.

This article originally appeared on Howard Bryant’s Substack. You can subscribe here.

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With cancer cases rising fastest in poorer countries, Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu, president-elect of the Union for International Cancer Control, says Africa needs investment in research, diagnosis and prevention

When Dr Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu last saw Gloria in Abuja, the young breast cancer patient was so ill that she was in hospital. The cancer had spread to her bones and lungs, and she was struggling with complications from the disease.

Then, at a global conference on cancer thousands of miles away in Hong Kong last month, Bagudu saw her again. Gloria was walking with a stick because of the cancer in her hips, but she was attending sessions, speaking about her experience and advocating for other patients.

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Refugee gig workers for tech companies don’t know how much they’ll be paid – if AI hasn’t already taken their jobs

In a portable building in Kakuma, a refugee camp near Kenya’s northern border with South Sudan, Grace used ChatGPT to research translations of Christian hymns in languages she doesn’t speak. She didn’t know the client, the purpose of her work or whether she would be paid, but as a refugee unable to legally work in Kenya, she needed any opportunity she could get.

Grace, who requested anonymity due to a nondisclosure agreement, prompted ChatGPT to translate the hymn’s English text into the assigned east Asian language. She then used the translation to search for existing versions and find information about its translator, author and Christian denomination. She fed those details to AOP Connect, a crowdsourced research platform owned by British AI enterprise software company RWS.

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Béjar’s daughter was 14 when she told him Instagram was failing to keep her safe. So when he became part of Meta’s ‘wellbeing team’, he knew he had to speak out – and his testimony cost it billions

The Social Reckoning hits cinemas this Friday, but the real world has already been working on a sequel – or rather, a threequel. Directed by Aaron Sorkin, the movie is a follow-up to The Social Network, detailing the further misadventures of Mark Zuckerberg and his social media empire, and in particular Frances Haugen, the employee who in 2021 leaked internal documents that appeared to show Facebook was aware of the harms its products had inflicted.

It’s no spoiler to reveal the film climaxes with Haugen’s testimony to the US Senate, on 5 October 2021. That very same day, Arturo Béjar, a consultant on the wellbeing team of Instagram (which is also owned by Facebook), hit send on a long-gestating email to Zuckerberg and other senior Facebook executives on a similar theme. “I wanted to bring to your attention what I believe is a critical gap in how we as a company approach harm, and how the people we serve experience it,” Béjar began, before laying out some shocking statistics from his team’s survey. For example: 24.4% of 13-15-year-olds on Instagram said they had received unwanted advances, and 21.8% said they had been the target of bullying on the platform in the past seven days. Furthermore, 51% of Instagram users said they had had a bad or harmful experience in the past seven days. Only 1% of them reported it, and of those, 2% had the content taken down – so just 0.02%. This was a far greater degree of harm than the company’s existing measurements suggested. Zuckerberg never replied.

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Demonstrators have rejected a promise by Sébastien Lecornu to present a plan to fix the country’s education system by the end of the month

Aisha Down in London, Joseph Gedeon in Washington and Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

In other news, the Trump administration pressured multiple countries to withdraw their sponsorship of a leading European conference on disinformation, with Canada, Lithuania and the EU’s diplomatic service subsequently agreeing to do so, the Guardian understands.

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Premier League clubs, and their European rivals, left with a long list of absentees after a gruelling international break

A four-match international break has presented a stress test. “The intensity of the squad, the athleticism of it, really, I think it’s designed for the elite,” said the Wales head coach, Craig Bellamy, on the completion of four matches in 11 days. Elite club coaches would disagree. The Nations League and the wider set of international games staged across the globe have been accompanied by a daily list of casualties, club officials viewing matches through their fingers as players pull up and gesture to the bench.

Hamstring and muscle problems have been rife. Sunderland, for example, will be without Brian Brobbey, a key striker, and Dan Ballard, a defensive mainstay, because of strains picked up playing for the Netherlands and Northern Ireland respectively. Bournemouth, yet to win a Premier League match, have lost Alex Scott for up to two months. His performance for England in their 7-0 victory against Croatia won rave reviews, a young player taking his chance and outshining Luka Modric. It came at a heavy cost. A quadriceps injury that had been diagnosed pre-match worsened. “There was zero risk taken from our side,” said Thomas Tuchel. The Bournemouth coach, Marco Rose, is unlikely to see it that way.

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The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has enabled scientists to trace magnetic switchbacks in the solar wind's magnetic field back to their source at the Sun. "Switchback" is the name given to an S-shaped kink in the solar wind's magnetic field – a sudden and large deflection. In 2022, the spacecraft gave scientists a full view of the structure (confirming the S-shape), but the origin remained up for debate. At the time, the probe's data suggested it might be near the Sun's surface, but a recent flight through a switchback allowed scientists to identify the source. "Solar Orbiter flew through a very large switchback," said Jesse Coburn of the French National Center for Scientific Research / Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (CNRS/LPP. "Because of this, we were able to sample rarely observed particles there that have tell-tale fingerprints of their origin." Solar Orbiter's Solar Wind Analyser instrument (SWA) was used to sample the switchback's plasma, and it came up with particles that could only have formed within hot magnetic loops at the surface of the Sun. Coburn said, "There are two main competing theories for how a switchback, and by extension the solar wind, forms. "The specific mix of particles detected by Solar Orbiter is the smoking gun for a formation process known as 'interchange reconnection'." This occurs when parts of the Sun with different magnetic properties interact. Some have field lines that stretch away into space. Others are closed and extend into space before looping back. When the two types meet, the lines can snap open, releasing previously trapped plasma into space. The other theory focuses on processes involving waves and turbulence. Stephanie Yardley of Northumbria University in the UK said, "Excitingly, we also see signs of these, but likely only after the switchback heads out into space. "Once the switchback has left the Sun, waves and turbulence take over and govern how it moves." Data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory was also stirred into the mix to reveal the switchback's solar source. It's exciting stuff and shows how the Sun heats its atmosphere and accelerates solar wind particles into space. It also has implications for predicting solar storms and their severity. Daniel Müller, ESA Project Scientist for Solar Orbiter, said, "As humans on Earth – and in space – our lives are entangled with what's happening on our star. The solar wind ties the Earth to the Sun, and our understanding of its dynamics has key implications for how we keep our planet safe from extreme space weather events. "The more we know, the better we can prepare for solar storms to protect our space-based infrastructure and technology." ®

Drie jaar na de terreuraanval van Hamas op 7 oktober werd woensdag bij een demonstratie in Amsterdam een spandoek meegedragen met de tekst ‘We support Hamas‘.

tokyobogue has added a photo to the pool:

Mt Hachimantai walk

tokyobogue has added a photo to the pool:

Mt Hachimantai walk