Vitamins: stop taking the pills | Life and style. Amazon Is Building A Biosphere For Its Employees. The Violent Femmes bassist has officially chosen the most non-violent alternative career path ever known to man: purveying tea. But that doesn’t mean he’s lost his rock ‘n’ roll edge. Now based in Hobart, Tasmania, with his wife and business partner, scientist Varuni Kulasekera, Ritchie and his wife are yet another example of creative and entrepreneurial folks turning to tea as a way to combine passion and business and fill a niche market. I chatted with Ritchie and Kulasekera, who own Chado the Way of Tea, at the Hong Kong International Tea Fair last week. The two travel the world sourcing premium teas and were in Hong Kong on their way back from Kulasekera’s native Sri Lanka to their home in Hobart.
So how did a pioneer of 1990s alternative rock and a scientist Ph.D. end up in tea in Tasmania? Ritchie says, “I was playing with Violent Femmes and we toured Australia a lot and came down to Tasmania to play a few shows there. Rock on, Ritchie. Kulasekera adds, “I grew up with tea. Humans Passing Drug Resistance to Wildlife in Protected Areas in Africa. A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered that humans are passing antibiotic resistance to wildlife, especially in protected areas where numbers of humans are limited. In the case of banded mongoose in a Botswana study, multidrug resistance among study social groups, or troops, was higher in the protected area than in troops living in village areas. The study also reveals that humans and mongoose appear to be readily exchanging fecal microorganisms, increasing the potential for disease transmission.
"The research identifies the coupled nature of humans, animals, and the natural environment across landscapes, even those designated as protected," said Kathleen Alexander, an associate professor of wildlife in Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources and Environment. "With few new antibiotics on the horizon, wide-scale antibiotic resistance in wildlife across the environment presents a critical threat to human and animal health. This (theoretical) house is entirely powered by exercise. How would you like it if every single room in your house was an exercise station? You think that would suck? Well, maybe it would create a lot of unpleasant pressure to be working out and make you feel like a big loser all the time, but then again, maybe it would make exercising so convenient that the habit would just fold seamlessly into your life.
And then, what if your workout was generating the power you needed to cook, clean, and entertain yourself? Would that be enough to make it a really solid habit? Or just an even more giant pain in the ass? Whether this house is your worst nightmare or biggest fantasy, it now exists. The best thing about this house, IMHO, is that it is named the “JF-Kit House,” and the JF is for Jane Fonda — a pioneer in both physical fitness and the kind of leftist politics that often go hand in hand with preferring your energy to be generated by leg lifts instead of fossil fuel.
Dream Of A Future Where You Don't Have To Waste Time Sleeping. Think about what we might do with 50% more "conscious lifetime"? You could spend more time with the kids, visit Africa, or start on that novel you’re always talking about. How? Not by actually living longer, as such, but by cutting down on our biggest time-waster: sleep.
In an extended essay at Aeon magazine, Jessa Gamble discusses several new technologies--from the Somneo Sleep Trainer to transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS)--that improve the "efficiency" of sleep, and could allow us to need less of it. "Now a life lived at 150 per cent might be within our grasp. Are we brave enough to choose it? " Gamble argues that the custom of sleeping eight hours on a raised mattress is culturally created. For example, California-based Advanced Brain Monitoring is working with DARPA on a mask that concentrates sleep to "only the most restorative stages": Meanwhile, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) induces "slow-wave oscillations" in the brain, pushing us into earlier deep sleep:
Climate changes could bring malaria to the UK | Science | The Observer. Leading health experts are urging the government to take action against the growing threat that mosquito-borne diseases, including potentially fatal malaria, could soon arrive in the UK. The disturbing recommendation to "act now before it is too late" is being made as a growing body of evidence indicates that what were once thought of as tropical diseases are being found ever closer to the UK. Health experts meeting at the annual public health conference of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health later this week will hear that rising incidences of a growing list of pest-borne diseases are now a "serious" cause for concern in the UK.
The conference will be told that it would be complacent to think that diseases such as dengue fever, malaria and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, now present on the European continent but once considered "exotic and confined to faraway places", will not emerge in the UK. Barratt said the government could not afford to be complacent. Walnuts linked to 'significant' drop in diabetes risk. Frequent consumption of walnuts could help to slash the risk of type 2 diabetes by almost a quarter, according to new research. The data comes from more than analysis of 135,000 people in the USA over a ten year period. Led by Professor Frank Hu and his team at the Harvard School of Public Health, USA, the researchers investigated the possible association between walnut intake and the incidence of type 2 diabetes in 2 large cohort studies: the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and NHS II. Writing in the Journal of Nutrition, the team show that eating walnuts two or three times a week was associated with a 24% reduction in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
"The findings from our study and others support the benefits of the incorporation of nuts, including walnuts, as a component of a healthy diet for diabetes prevention," wrote Hu and his colleagues. Study details. Nandrolone Decanoate Induces Genetic Damage in Multiple Organs of Rats. Citizen Libraries Are The New Home For The Printed Word. The survival of the library, at least in its current form, appears tenuous. Library conferences buzz with anxiety about "reinventing themselves. " Amazon.com can deliver a lifetime of reading to almost any electronic device in minutes. Computers, DVDs, and "digital activity centers" are crowding out books on library shelves. Budget cuts are hitting libraries hard in many major cities. In spite of this siege, reading is not exactly waning.
More books are published today than ever before, and the percent of Americans saying they have read a book during the last year, say Gallup and Pew, is still at around 80%, down from about 92% in 1978. For book lovers dismayed at the disintegration of a reading culture, however, there is no going gently into that dark night. One of those new spaces is Ourshelves, a San Francisco lending library open to everyone, no matter how little they can pay, or where they live, says Kristina Kearns, its bibliophile founder. Vitamin C may protect marathon runners from colds, but what about the rest of us? Daily supplements of vitamin C may reduce the risk of developing common cold for marathon runners by 50%, but there is little evidence that it helps the rest of us, says a new Cochrane review. Data from five trials with 598 marathon runners, skiers and soldiers on subarctic exercises indicated that the risk of common cold was reduced by 52% for vitamin C supplements of 0.2 g per day or more, according to findings published in The Cochrane Library.
However, data from 24 trials comparisons involving 10,708 participants from the general community revealed no significant changes to the risk of common cold. Select analysis further revealed that vitamin C supplements did reduce the duration of common colds in adult and children by 8% and 14%, respectively. In addition, a dose of 1 to 2 grams per day reduced the duration by 18% for children. Cold stats The common cold is one of the most widespread illnesses in the world. Benefits for athletes? World's First Bionic Eye Receives FDA Approval. This morning, I was speaking with Brian Mech, the vice-president of the medical device company Second Sight, when his land-line rang.
Mech had just been telling me about the fifteen years his company has spent developing the Argus II, a retinal prosthesis that restores partial sight to people with a degenerative eye disease called Retinitis pigmentosa (RP). It had been a long process, Mech said, but he can count on one hand the number of days he hasn't woken up excited about the work ahead. And they were nearing the end--Europe approved the Argus II in 2011, and the FDA was expected to give the green light some time soon. When his other line rang, Mech excused himself and set down the phone. I could hear a muffled version of his other conversation.
After a few seconds, I heard "I gotta go," and then he was back. "Emily," he said, "I'm going to have to run: FDA approval just came through. " And with that, the U.S. has its first bionic eye. We Should Measure Our Food In Exercise, Not In Calories. Fast food establishments in New York City and California are required to post how many calories are in the milkshake and fries you’re about to devour. But does that actually do anything to dissuade people from eating high-calorie meals? Calories, after all, are just a meaningless number for many people (including this author) who don’t really think of their overall eating habits or exercise practices in terms of the flow of calories in and out of their bodies. Increasingly, researchers are showing there’s a better way than just calorie postings to encourage eaters to make healthier decisions: by informing consumers how much exercise it would take to burn a meal off.
"People who viewed the menu without nutritional information ordered a meal totaling 1,020 calories, on average, significantly more than the average 826 calories ordered by those who viewed menus that included information about walking-distance," writes Scientific American. Electronic implant designed to reduce obesity to undergo trials. 28 March 2013Last updated at 19:44 ET By Neil Bowdler Health and science reporter, BBC News The device is designed to read the chemical signature of appetite in the vagus nerve UK-based scientists have designed an 'intelligent' microchip which they claim can suppress appetite. Animal trials of the electronic implant are about to begin and its makers say it could provide a more effective alternative to weight-loss surgery.
The chip is attached to the vagus nerve which plays a role in appetite as well as a host of other functions within the body. Human trials of the implant could begin within three years, say its makers. The work is being led by Prof Chris Toumazou and Prof Sir Stephen Bloom of Imperial College London. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote The chip will tell the brain don't eat any more - the gut's full of food and you don't need to eat any more ” End QuoteProf Sir Stephen BloomImperial College, London "It will be control of appetite rather than saying don't eat completely.
EX-99.1. Researchers successfully map fountain of youth. In collaboration with an international research team, University of Copenhagen researchers have for the first time mapped telomerase, an enzyme which has a kind of rejuvenating effect on normal cell ageing. The findings have just been published in Nature Genetics and are a step forward in the fight against cancer. Mapping the cellular fountain of youth - telomerase. This is one of the results of a major research project involving more than 1,000 researchers worldwide, four years of hard work, DKK 55 million from the EU and blood samples from more than 200,000 people. This is the largest collaboration project ever to be conducted within cancer genetics.
Stig E. "We have discovered that differences in the telomeric gene are associated both with the risk of various cancers and with the length of the telomeres. The mapping of telomerase is an important discovery, because telomerase is one of the very basic enzymes in cell biology. "A gene is like a country. Sugar, not fat, exposed as deadly villain in obesity epidemic | Society. Sugar – given to children by adults, lacing our breakfast cereals and a major part of our fizzy drinks – is the real villain in the obesity epidemic, and not fat as people used to think, according to a leading US doctor who is taking on governments and the food industry. Dr Robert Lustig, who was this month in London and Oxford for a series of talks about his research, likens sugar to controlled drugs. Cocaine and heroin are deadly because they are addictive and toxic – and so is sugar, he says.
"We need to wean ourselves off. We need to de-sweeten our lives. We need to make sugar a treat, not a diet staple," he said. "The food industry has made it into a diet staple because they know when they do you buy more. Lustig's book, Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar has made waves in America and has now been published in the UK by 4th Estate. That does not mean burgers are OK. These amino acids are found in corn-fed American beef. But so is the US government, he says. . • Oranges. . • Beef. Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar by Robert Lustig. 1011.full.