Diets high in fish do not promote heart heath and may increase risk of heart disease, according to a study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.
Researchers conducted a review of ten different studies analyzing the diets and health of Eskimos and Inuits in Greenland and North America. They found that Eskimos in Greenland have similar rates of heart…
Depending on where you live, these are the diseases that will most likely kill you. Using data from the World Health Organization, Simran Khosla at the GlobalPost labeled each nation with the disease that caused the most death in that country.
And it seems like much of the world will succumb to heart disease. Most prevalent in Africa is HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. You can zoom in on the other regions at GlobalPost.
Here you can see fireflies, a type of beetle that glows.
Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light from enzymes called luciferases. In nature, many organisms such as jellyfish and fireflies ‘glow’ using these enzymes.
In scientific research, bioluminescent proteins are used to monitor changes to cells.
In the bottom images around 7000 bacterial colonies have been printed on an agar plate.The bacteria have been genetically engineered to display the bioluminescent enzyme from the firefly Photinus pyralis.
The images were taken with a sensitive camera which can detect the light output from luciferase in each colony. The light output of different types of luciferase can be analysed to discover which ones have enhanced characteristics that could be used in research.
Image credits: Terry Priest, s58y, Cassandra Stowe
The image above shows the skeleton of a normal chick (top left) and a chicken with a severe mutation (top right).
The mutation is in a gene called TALPID3 which is important for development. Chickens which have lost the function of TALPID3 have brain deformities, small lungs, liver fibrosis and extra fingers.
Scientists at the Roslin Institute have now found that humans with a rare genetic disorder that affects brain development, called Joubert syndrome, also have mutations in TALPID3.
By investigating the impact of the gene at the cellular level in chickens, the researchers have provided further insight into the specifics of Joubert syndrome in people.
Diagnosis of deadly brain conditions could be helped by new research from the Roslin Institute and University of Manchester, showing how the infectious proteins that cause the disease spread.
A study reveals how the proteins - called prions - spread from the gut to the brain after a person or animal has eaten contaminated meat.
The findings could aid earlier diagnosis of prion diseases such as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in man, scrapie in sheep and goats, and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk.
A study published Thursday shows how a bird flu virus that’s sickening and killing people in China could mutate to potentially become more contagious.
Just three changes could be enough to do the trick, scientists report in the journal PLOS Pathogens.
And the news comes just as federal officials are getting ready to lift a moratorium on controversial lab experiments that would deliberately create flu viruses with mutations like these.
Public health officials have been worried about this bird flu virus, called H7N9, because it’s known to have infected more than 1,500 people — and killed 40 percent of them. So far, unlike other strains that more commonly infect humans, this deadly virus does not spread easily between people.
The fear is that if it mutates in a way that lets it spread more easily, the virus will sweep around the globe and take a heavy toll, because people’s immune systems haven’t ever been exposed to this type of flu before. Past pandemics caused by novel flu viruses jumping from animals or birds into people have killed millions.
Brain scientists are offering a new reason to control blood sugar levels: It might help lower your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
“There’s many reasons to get blood sugar under control,” says David Holtzman, chairman of neurology at Washington University in St. Louis. “But this is certainly one.”
Holtzman moderated a panel Sunday at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago that featured new research exploring the links between Alzheimer’s and diabetes.
“The risk for dementia is elevated about twofold in people who have diabetes or metabolic syndrome (a group of risk factors that often precedes diabetes),” Holtzman says. “But what’s not been clear is, what’s the connection?”
One possibility involves the way the brain metabolizes sugar, says Liqin Zhao, an associate professor in the school of pharmacy at the University of Kansas.
Ublester Rodriguez could not have anticipated that his life would be profoundly changed by kitchen and bathroom countertops.
He says that he grew up poor, in a small Mexican town, and came to the United States when he was 14. He spoke no English, but he immediately got a job.
“In the beginning I was working in a Chinese restaurant, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. It was all day, so I never had time to go to school,” he recalls. “I was a dishwasher.”
He labored in restaurant kitchens for about eight years. But he wanted Sundays off to go to church and play soccer. So when his brother-in-law offered to help him get a new job, he jumped at the chance.
That’s how he ended up in a workshop that cuts and polishes slabs of an artificial stone to make kitchen and bathroom countertops.
“It was something totally different for me,” says Rodriguez.
Back then, in 2000, the material he was cutting was also something totally different for the American countertop industry. The stuff looked a lot like natural granite. In reality, it was made in a factory, from bits of quartz bound together by a resin.
This year saw the largest outbreak of measles in the U.S. since 1994, with 1,250 cases reported as of Oct. 3, largely driven by families choosing not to vaccinate their kids. Worldwide, the disease has resurfaced in areas that had been declared measles-free.
Some families choosing not to vaccinate argue that measles is just a pesky childhood illness to be endured. But two new studies illustrate how skipping the measles vaccine carries a double risk. Not only does it leave a child vulnerable to a highly contagious disease, but also, for individuals who survive an initial measles attack, the virus increases their vulnerability to all kinds of other infections for months, possibly even years, after they recover.
The research begins to explain something surprising that happened when the measles vaccine was introduced in the U.S. in the 1960s. Rates of childhood deaths from other diseases fell precipitously. The same thing happened as the vaccine was introduced around the world.
But what is it about the measles vaccine that seems to provide protection from more than just measles? The new studies published this week in the journals Science and Science Immunology provide substance to what has been the leading theory: Measles can damage the immune system by erasing the body’s memory of previously encountered antigens.
The first splashes of yellow are starting to appear across our gardens and parks so it must be nearly daffodil time. There are over 10,000 narcissus cultivars and ‘Carlton’ is the most commonly grown of all. There are 5,300 hectares of this cultivar grown in the UK for cut flowers alone. This cultivar was first registered in 1927 and it is estimated that there are now 350,000 tons of it (or 9450 million bulbs)! Is this the most massive plant taxon on earth?
March in the SCIence Garden
Narcissus was the classical Greek name of a beautiful youth who became so entranced with his own reflection that he killed himself and all that was left was a flower – a Narcissus. The word is possibly derived from an ancient Iranian language. But the floral narcissi are not so self-obsessed. As a member of the Amaryllidaceae, a family known for containing biologically active alkaloids, it is no surprise to learn that they contain a potent medicinal agent.
Narcissus (and in particular this cultivar) are an excellent source of galanthamine, a drug more commonly associated with snowdrops (Galanthus spp.). Galanthamine is currently recommended for the treatment of moderate Alzheimer’s disease by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) but is very effective in earlier stages of the disease too.
Galanthamine
Today, part of the commercial supply of this molecule comes from chemical synthesis, itself an amazing chemical achievement due to the structural complexity of the molecule, and partly from the natural product isolated from different sources across the globe. In China, Lycoris radiata is grown as a crop, in Bulgaria, Leucojum aestivum is farmed and in the UK the humble daffodil, Narcissus ‘Carlton’ is the provider.
Narcissus ‘Carlton’ growing on large scale
Agroceutical Products, was established in 2012 to commercialise the research of Trevor Walker and colleagues who developed a cost effective, reliable and scalable method for producing galanthamine by extraction from Narcissus. They discovered the “Black Mountains Effect” – the increased production of galanthamine in the narcissus when they are grown under stress conditions at 1,200 feet. With support from Innovate UK and other organisations, the process is still being developed. Whilst not a full scale commercial production process just yet, the work is ongoing. As well as providing a supply of the much needed drug, this company may be showing the Welsh farming community how to secure additional income from their land. They continue to look for partners who have suitable land over 1000 ft in elevation.
The estimated global patient population for Alzheimer’s in 2010 was 30 million. It is expected to reach 120 million by 2050. The global market for Alzheimer’s disease drugs for 2019 was US$ 2870 million.
Written by Alison Foster: Botanical Horticulturist and Science Communicator
Happy International Vulture Awareness Day! Bald is beautiful!. Why are they bald? These birds help clean up our environment and keep diseases at bay by eating carcasses. The bald head helps reduce the places bacteria can hide (such as in feathers) while they are digging in for dinner. Their adaptations to deal with carrion don’t stop there though. These birds can literally eat diseases in flesh, and destory them in their guts, that would otherwise contaminate the environment. That’s right, vultures keep humans and other animals healthy!!
However, most of them are suffering and dying out at human hands, and the world will be much worse off without these incredible birds. Vultures all over the world are shot and exposed to intentional, and unintentional, lead and chemical contamination of carcasses. Right now many old world vultures are having their populations devastated by the use of Diclofenac in livestock, which kills vultures soon after they eat from the carcass. Even if you don’t like vultures, this is a problem directly applicable to humans, with the backlash already wreaking havoc in India.
This post contains photos of vultures I’ve been fortunate to meet over the years. My favorite vulture is, of course, the bearded vulture (aka lammergeier), but I don’t have a photo of a live one, only dead ones (study skins at museums). I can’t wait until the day I can meet and interact with a live bearded vulture, but that may only happen in captivity if we don’t tackle the dangers of diclofenac, lead, and persecution, and do so quickly. We are talking vulture species extinctions within the next few years.
Today I learned purple petunias will develop an autoimmune response that attacks purple pigment if you genetically add an additional purple pigment producing gene into their genome.
If you are overstimulated by your own thought processes it is okay to stop doing those activities (at least temporarily) to readjust and try again.
Milk has over 400 different fatty acids- a lot of those saturated fatty acids in milk and meat are anti-cancer, antibacterial, antiviral. Researchers are still figuring out how they impact our bodies but the studies show a lot of positive effects. Fat is good for you and that’s what veg diets lack. If veg were healthy, people would be disease free. Fruit and vegetable consumption in the US is at record highs while meat, milk, butter are at record lows. People should be healthy if the vegetable myth was true but they’re not.
First a warning, this post includes content of a sexual nature, reader discretion advised.
Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD’s) should be on the on the forefront of the minds of all expats living kick-ass sexually active lives in China, although we don’t always like to think about it when things start to get hot and heavy. It’s always been risky sleeping around the Middle Kingdom, but lately it…
Seasonal Rituals for Worshippers of Incabulos, the God of Disease and Pestilence
One of my players was playing a priest/cleric of Incabulos and he was not sure what to do on his down time so I made up season Rituals for him!! Hope you can find them useful!
Farmer’s Tale: The priests of Incabulos must go out and make sure that some of the crops the farmers plant during this season never grow. They are expected to go out and vandalize the fields. Some do this by setting them on fire, poisoning the crops, or just uprooting all of the soil. When the plants begin to bud through the soil they must go and destroy a farmers field in their gods name.
Harvest’s Tale: Once every week, the farmers of the area must give 20 pounds of their food to the priest. If they don’t give it to the priest it then becomes the priests responsibility to go out and steal 20 lbs of food from their house.
Polar’s Tale: During this month disease and sickness should be spread. As the cold assaults everyone, they become more prone to getting sick. The priests are there to help spread disease in order to please their God. They must infect up to twelve people this month. If someone dies from the disease, then they need not try and get the twelve and only need the one.
Twilight’s Tale: When the sun sets and the three moon rises, this is when Incabulos rests. He ask that while he is resting, you give him prayers. Solitude for three days praying for incabulos, whispering the smallest of incantations. If done properly, you enter a trance where you experience his dreams. Most priests become fixated on one dream alone and when they exit the trance, they try and accomplish the arena they experienced in order to appease Incabulos when he awakes.
Bahamut’s Tale: When the sky’s begin to glow orange is when your God wants you to go out and recruit. Do this any way possible. Offer peasants housing before the firestorms start, make threats, steal children. Your God does not care how but he needs his influence spread. After all, most of his wishes are considered “evil” and illegal so he is in constant need of new worshippers.
Vishnash’s Tale: The season where fire rains down. Something your God prefers is for the sacrifice of a farmer. Doing this in his eyes puts you a head of the other priests. He does not make this a requirement for all priest s but in his unholy text it talks about setting a farmer aflame during this season in order to help the hunger spread. This is a very hard to pull off task though and Incabulos would rather not lose his followers to this one tiny crime.
When you fly on an airplane, you’re trapped inside a metal tube for a few hours with hundreds of other passengers, sharing the overhead compartments, lavatories, and air. It feels like there’s a good chance for disease to spread in flight—but just how likely is it?
In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vicki Stover Hertzberg and colleagues tried to map out how respiratory viruses like influenza might spread during air travel. Members of the research team took ten transcontinental flights and carefully documented the behavior of passengers as they moved about the cabin—who got up during the flight, how long they lingered outside the restroom, and how the passengers interacted with each other and with the in-flight crew.
After crunching the data, they conclude that while you’re at a very high risk of infection from someone sitting within a few seats of you or the row in front or behind you, the transmission risk for flu or other diseases that spread via infected droplets drops off rapidly as you move further away from the infected passenger.
The researchers caution that other diseases that spread more through aerosols or from contact with pathogens on surfaces may spread differently on planes. That kind of contact with infected travelers in the waiting area, at the airport bar, or in baggage claim could all increase disease transmission. Listen here to learn more.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could erase disease with these happy organ erasers? Sadly the only two diseases to be eradicated worldwide are smallpox and rinderpest. We are still working to get rid of polio, yaws, dracunculiasis, malaria and so many more.
If you had magic powers, what disease or condition would you choose to wipe off the face of the Earth?
My name is Michelle Rocha! As a Health Coach in training, I’m looking for 6 individuals to provide 6 tailored sessions, for free!
A Health Coach is a supportive mentor and wellness practitioner who helps others feel their best through personalized food and lifestyle changes that meet your unique needs and health goals. On top of it, I use naturopathic and holistic approaches.
These sessions will consist of: 1. Taking your case 2. What health accomplishments you would like to achieve? 3. How will I be supporting, motivating and helping you become your best self as well as obtaining these goals to improve the quality of your life?
During these session(s) we will be using platforms such as Whatsapp, Zoom, Skype, Email to interact with each other.
These health goals can be something you always wanted to reach! Examples of that can be weight loss, improving your diet, gut health, reducing stress and/or anxiety, detox, IBS help, diabetes management, Rheumatoid arthritis, Psoriasis, fertility, reducing chronic inflammation, sleeping regulation, etc.
I will be using your case as practical assignments to my College. Your cases are going to be kept confidential and in private on a lock filing system that I have provided. I will continue to keep your personal information and details private even when presenting your case to the College.
Are you ready to transform yourself into your best version? Send me a message if you are interested or if you would like more information!
I am looking forward to hearing from you! Much Love, Michelle
“Because all living beings are subject to illness, I am ill as well. When all living beings are no longer ill, my illness will come to an end."
Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra
Imagine a sick man confined to a tiny room, visited by countless beings who somehow manage to squeeze inside. While obviously not practicing social distancing, the Buddhist story of Vimalakīrti’s sick room is particularly relevant to our present pandemic.
The most prolific of poets in Edo period Japan, Matsuo Bashō set aside his aristocratic literary career in favor of a shaven head and rag robes during contemplative pilgrimage, his dreams wandering withered fields while sick and dying.
Today is the 20th anniversary of World Asthma Day. The 2018 theme is “Never too early. Never too late. It’s always the right time to address airways disease.” The theme calls attention to the need for diagnoses for patients at all stages of life.
Asthma is the most common chronic disease among children and affects more than a quarter-billion people around the globe, including more than 8% of all children here in the United States.
Those who suffer from asthma also often suffer from allergies. May is National Allergy/Asthma Awareness Month.
If you’re suffering from a cold (and who isn’t at this time of year?) the chances are it’s down to one of these species of viruses, which cause over 50% of common colds Find out more here http://ow.ly/yMD530m4OUE
GE is going under the microscope to celebrate the life sciences and feature some cool nanongrams. Here, we can see a low-magnification image of the upper body region of a common fruit fly, which can carry serious diseases and destroy crops. But they can also be useful: housefly larvae feed on a wide range of decaying matter and waste. Research suggests that this adaptation could be used to combat ever-increasing amounts of waste and trash. Does that make them a friend or a foe?
Guinea Worm Disease (GWD): soon to be a thing of the past?
The Wikipedia article for smallpox begins “Smallpox was…”.
Think on that for a second. We as a species managed to eradicate from the earth an unthinking killer of thousands.
Almost forty years later, we might be able to stamp another disease out. The parasitic Guinea worm is remains in just over 120 known cases and is on the brink of vanishing forever.
Infections occur when a person drinks contaminated drinking water, and cases can culminate in people suffering from the pain of dozens of emerging worms, each over a meter long, bursting from anywhere on their body. No need for a Google image search if you’re squeamish.
The parasite is being fought through education on the dangers of contaminated water and the use of special filtered straws that remove the parasite from it. Already, the disease has been vanquished in India and Pakistan using these methods. Without further human hosts (the only species that the worm infects), the last of these parasites will eventually disappear and drinking water in Ghana and Sudan will be left a fair bit safer.
