Hot Moths #MothsMatter
The mercury had been rising for a few days, nudging up the little iron shims on the garden’s max-min thermometer by mid-afternoon. Three days on the trot it has peaked at a little over 30 Celsius in the shade despite it having been a Bank Holiday Weekend. Nights have been sultry, as they say in a certain kind of pulp fiction. Humid, and the mercury not nudging the iron bars below about 16 Celsius.
Face to face with an Old Lady, Mormo maura
Of course, these are not extremes, these are puny temperatures when compared to much of the rest of the world. But, this is England and our weather is tempered by the Gulf Stream a...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 27, 2019 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Moths Source Type: blogs
Impossible and Beyond: How healthy are these meatless burgers?
Plant-based burgers are not a novel concept. But new products designed to taste like meat are now being marketed to vegetarians and meat-eaters alike. Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger are two such options. Eating these burgers is touted as a strategy to save the earth, casting meat as a prehistoric concept. Both brands also offer up their products as nutritious alternatives to animal protein.
But how do they stack up? It turns out the answer may depend on whether your priorities lie with your personal health or the health of the planet.
The good news: Meatless burgers are a good source of protein, vitami...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - August 15, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Emily Gelsomin, MLA, RD, LDN Tags: Health Healthy Eating Source Type: blogs
Counting down the Top Twenty Moths of 2019
My very good friend Ladybird Farmer, she of the multiple smallholding emoji, was impressed with the last moth blog post and suggested I do a count down of the Top Ten for the year. Well, while I’m holding out for a Merveille du Jour in September and perhaps a December Moth in November, I could have a go at picking out my favourites so far that perhaps highlight the incredible diversity of the 2600 or so Lepidoptera that we see across the British Isles.
Of course, all the ones that I’ve photographed were in our small back garden in a rural, but urbanised village north of Cambridge, so it’s quite a limited ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 9, 2019 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs
Magnetically Controlled Soft Robots to Operate on Human Body
Although a myriad of robots is already used in a variety of industries, including medicine, they’re almost exclusively rigid devices using conventional mechanics. To best work with the pliability of the human body, it may be advantageous for medical robots to be soft and not include gears, motors, and metal cables.
Researchers at North Carolina State University and nearby Elon University have now developed such robots and have recently reported a technique that allows others to build similar devices designed for unique applications.
The robots are made using a shape-memory polymer seeded with magnetic iron part...
Source: Medgadget - August 7, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Cardiac Surgery Materials Plastic Surgery Source Type: blogs
7 Foods That May Help Your Productivity
You're reading 7 Foods That May Help Your Productivity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Food is fuel to your productivity. Understanding this should revolutionize the way we eat. How often do you ask yourself “Am I eating what my body needs, or what my tastebuds want?”
When it comes to achieving productivity in your workday, the importance of eating well cannot be overemphasized. Here are 7 suggestions for healthy meals/snacks to improve your health and productivity at the same ti...
Source: PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement - August 7, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: BenTejes Tags: featured productivity tips food for brain food for the mind Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, July 22nd 2019
This study elucidates the potential to use mitochondria from different donors (PAMM) to treat UVR stress and possibly other types of damage or metabolic malfunctions in cells, resulting in not only in-vitro but also ex-vivo applications.
Gene Therapy in Mice Alters the Balance of Macrophage Phenotypes to Slow Atherosclerosis Progression
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2019/07/gene-therapy-in-mice-alters-the-balance-of-macrophage-phenotypes-to-slow-atherosclerosis-progression/
Atherosclerosis causes a sizable fraction of all deaths in our species. It is the generation of fatty deposits in blood vesse...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 21, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Common Dietary Supplements Have Little to No Effect on Mortality
Yet another sizable study has shown that common dietary supplements have little to no effect on late life mortality. This finding of course has to compete with the wall to wall marketing deployed by the supplement market. Researchers have been presenting data on the ineffectiveness of near all supplements of years, but it doesn't seem to reduce the enthusiasm for these products. In the past it was fairly easy to dismiss all supplements as nonsense, or at the very least causing only marginal effects that were in no way comparable to the benefits of exercise and calorie restriction, but matters are now becoming more complex....
Source: Fight Aging! - July 19, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
New MRI Technology Images One Atom at a Time
Researchers at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA, are using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology to image individual atoms, revealing never-before-seen extraordinary detail, according to a study recently published inNature. MRI scans photograph billions upon billions of protons in order to accurately capture what ’s going on in the body. IBM nanoscience researcher Christopher Lutz, PhD, wanted to replicate that technology to see if they could image singular atoms. Dr. Lutz and his team decided to use a cryogenic scanning tunneling microscope, a tool made with a metallic tip and applied voltage th...
Source: radRounds - July 19, 2019 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Hyperemesis: (Way) beyond morning sickness
Morning sickness — the common term for nausea and vomiting during early pregnancy — is not unusual, as many women know. Starting around the sixth to eighth week of pregnancy, as many as 80% of women report having nausea and 50% experience vomiting. But as comedian Amy Schumer can attest, hyperemesis goes well beyond what people generally think of as morning sickness. Marked by doggedly persistent nausea and vomiting, hyperemesis occurs in up to three out of 100 pregnancies. Not surprisingly, women who have hyperemesis often lose weight: losing approximately 5% of pre-pregnancy weight is common.
Why does hyperemesis occ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - July 9, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Huma Farid, MD Tags: Parenting Pregnancy Women's Health Source Type: blogs
Is “Medicare For All (Who Want it)” Enough?
By MIKE MAGEE
In the 2nd night of the Democratic Primary debate on June 27, 2019, Pete Buttigieg was asked whether he supported Medicare-For-All. He responded, “I support Medicare for all who want it.”
In doing so, he side-stepped the controversial debate over shifts of power from states to the federal government, and trusted that logic would eventually prevail over a collusive Medical-Industrial Complex with an iron lock grip on a system that deals everyone imaginable in on the sickness profitability curve – except the patient.
On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into l...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 8, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Democratic Debates Health Policy Medicare Politics Medicare For All Mike Magee Source Type: blogs
Iron deficiency: Causes your doctor won ’ t tell you about
Very commonly, no cause for iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia are found: no gastrointestinal bleeding, no excessive menstrual blood loss, no hemolysis (red blood cell destruction). Your doctor tells you that there is no identifiable cause and you are therefore resigned to taking iron supplements, prescription iron, injectable iron, or even blood transfusions while the anemia often does not respond or does so only temporarily.
Here are two situations in which iron deficiency develops that are rarely addressed by doctors, but YOU can:
The phytates of wheat and grains—Modern wheat, in particular, has been se...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - July 4, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Iron deficiency anemia minerals phytates wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Magnetic Nanoclusters For Tumor Destruction
A wide variety of magnetic nanoparticles have been developed by researchers. These devices can be injected into tumors and, using a magnetic field, made to heat up and kill cancer cells. One major challenge with using such nanoparticles is that they are usually expected to be injected using a syringe directly into a tumor, but most tumors aren’t so easy to reach. A more systemic delivery method, which can let magnetic nanoparticles access deep-seated cancers, is very much needed.
Now, researchers at Oregon State University have reported in the journal ACS Nano that they have developed specially designed nanoclust...
Source: Medgadget - June 27, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Medicine Nanomedicine Oncology Source Type: blogs
A hint of flint
The Lepidoptera, the scaly-winged insects we know as moths and butterflies, have become some of a citizen science preoccupation for me over the last year or so, hopefully at least a few of you noticed.
I’ve talked about how many of these insects are perhaps dowdy and drab but there is such huge variety in their form, shape, patterns, and behaviour and so many are brighter and more colourful and intriguing than the moths we call butterflies in English. With more than 2500 species in the British Isles, what’s an amateur naturalist going to do, but study, photograph, and write about them?
Yesterday one of my coll...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - June 27, 2019 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Moths Source Type: blogs
Is it SAFE to be grain-free?
Listen to critics of the Wheat Belly lifestyle and you’d think that, by banishing all things wheat and grains from your life, you will be excommunicated from your church, tossed out of your club, ostracized by friends and family, and suffer dire health consequences like heart disease and colon cancer. After all, they say that you are eliminating an entire food group and will be crippled by lack of fiber and nutrients. Worse, our focus on increasing our intake of fats and oils will get you a heart attack, three stents, or bypass surgery and you’ll be obliged to take Lipitor and Repatha for a lifetime.
First of a...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 25, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle grain-free Weight Loss Source Type: blogs
Milan Is the Latest Olympic Loser
The headlines say that Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, have been awarded the 2026 Winter Olympics. Ten years from now Italians may look back on today as a disaster. More and more cities are realizing that Olympic games are glamorous but not economically sound. I made that point four years ago when Boston withdrew its bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics:The [Boston] critics knew something that the Olympic enthusiasts tried to forget: Megaprojects like the Olympics are enormously expensive, always over budget, and disruptive. They leave cities with unused stadiums and other waste.E.M. Swift, who covered the Oly...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 24, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
