The Rise and Fall of Super bowl Snack foods Not so long ago avocado was a kitchen appliance color
and Americans are expected to dip into about 208 million avocados'worth of guacamole during the Super bowl according to the Haas Avocado Board.
That's a 32 percent increase over 2013's consumption of guacamole and other avocado-based treats.
Avocados may be one of the healthiest Super bowl snacks: They're high in protein vitamins and healthy monounsaturated fats and they contain no cholesterol.
More Fruit and Veggie Servings Needed? Eating seven or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day reduces people's risk of dying a new study suggests.
The study also found that fresh vegetables may be slightly more protective than fresh fruit and canned fruit may actually increase the risk of death.
Researchers analyzed information from more than 65000 people in England ages 35 and older who answered questions about their eating habits.
People who ate seven or more servings of fruits and vegetables were 42 percent less likely to die from any cause over a nearly eight-year period compared with those who ate less than one serving a day. 6 Easy Ways to Eat More Fruits
and Vegetables Eating fewer than seven servings was also beneficial although the protective effect was not as strong:
Whatever your starting point it is always worth eating more fruit and vegetables. Vegetables trump fruit?
Each daily serving of fresh vegetables was linked with a 16-percent reduction in a person's risk of dying
while each serving of fresh fruit was linked with a 4-percent reduction in risk of death.
Vegetables have a larger effect than fruit but fruit still makes a real difference Oyebode said.
However each serving of canned or frozen fruit increased the risk of death by 17 percent.
Because the researchers did not distinguish between frozen and canned fruit they cannot say whether one or both types of fruit were responsible for the effect.
However they noted that canned fruit is much more popular than frozen fruit in Europe.
The high levels of sugar found in canned fruit may outweigh the benefits of the fruit Oyebode said.
Still the researchers noted the study found associations and cannot prove that fruits and vegetables were solely responsible for the reduced risk of death
or that canned fruit increases the risk of death. The study did not take into account people's total calorie intake
or salt consumption which may affect the link. It's also possible that people with poor access to fresh fruit
and vegetables experience other factors that increase their risk of dying such as health conditions or stressful lives the researchers said.
Policy implications The findings agree with dietary recommendations in the United states which say that people who eat 2000 calories daily should consume nearly nine servings of fruits
and vegetables (2 cups of fruit and 2. 5 cups of vegetables with a half-cup being one serving) according to Harvard School of Public health.
However people's actual consumption of fruits and vegetables often falls short of guidelines. In the study people in England said they ate just under four servings of fruits
and vegetables a day and a 2013 report from the U s. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that Americans eat less than three portions a day.
With increasing evidence of their health benefits policy-makers may need to consider broader initiatives to promote fruit
and vegetable consumption particularly vegetables and salad the researchers wrote today (March 31) in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
but also to increase access to fruits and vegetables the researchers said. Follow Rachael Rettner@Rachaelrettner. Followlive Science@livescience Facebook & Google+.
but unlike most other plants its flowers bloom above ground while its fruits (peanuts) develop below ground.
#How Do Pineapples Grow? Contrary to what some people think pineapples don't grow on trees they grow out of the ground from a leafy plant.
The plant consists of stocky leaves whorled around a central stem. In a healthy pineapple plant the tapered swordlike leaves can grow up to about 5 feet (1. 5 meters) long.
The pineapple fruit grows out of the top of the central stem. The fruit is actually the result of dozens of individual fruit-producing flowers that have fused into a single fruit
which is capped with a crown sporting numerous short leaves. Unlike most fruits pineapples are grown not from seeds.
Common commercial varieties of pineapples are self-incompatible meaning that the plants'pollen cannot fertilize members of the same variety.
So unless different varieties are grown next to one another and flower simultaneously the plant will produce a seedless fruit that develops without fertilization.
When removed the crown of the pineapple fruit contains small roots. If it's planted into the ground
(or a pot) a new fruit-producing plant will grow. Additionally the plant's suckers (side shoots that grow in between the leaves of the main stem)
and slips (tiny plantlets that grow out from the base of the pineapple fruit) can produce new plants
when replanted. Follow Joseph Castro on Twitter. Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+e
#Can Men Lactate? Unlike female nipples male nipples appear to be purely decorative. But can they also be functional
The orange-fleshed tubers are especially high in Vitamin a (also called beta-carotene which is the carotenoid that turns into Vitamin a) vitamins C E and B6 fiber and manganese.
Add some foods rich in Vitamin c like oranges and berries to help with iron absorption. Folic acid is very important at this stage as is calcium.
Add some foods rich in Vitamin c like oranges and berries to help with iron absorption. Folic acid is also very important at this stage as is calcium.
A second grader is about to start learning environmental science along with a cute purple alien named Plum and Plum s friends.
Kids and Science Good for More than Just a Grade According to the narrative Plum is a video game designer on the desolate Planet Blorb.
they including Plum have been longing to experience nature On earth. So Plum commandeers a space ship
and flies to Earth where she meets and befriends Clem Oliver Gabi Brad and Cooper.
Over time Plum and her friends experience many mesmerizing and insightful discoveries about the planet.
or the mobile app Plum s Photo Hunt (iphone ipod Touch ipad) allowing children to draw scenes
and the photographic submissions from Plum s Photo Hunt app feed in an orderly way into a Django database for
In July an outside evaluator the Concord Evaluation Group (CEG) will conduct an evaluation to measure the impact of Plum Landing#resources on kids and their families.#
Plum may soon play a role in the museum setting. In fact the Ecotarium Museum in Worcester Mass. recently celebrated Earth Day with a Plum Landing#screening hands-on activities and giveaways.
This fall Plum Landing#also plans to offer more games a new app and additional resources that encourage indoor-outdoor science exploration.#
#oemany of us in public media are now creating projects that are focused much more on reaching increasingly mobile audiences.
Plum Landing promises to do that by creating an educational science experience for elementary-aged children that will enable them to think about the world in a new way.#
The caterpillars have munched through cocoa, bananas and maize (corn), and are defecating in water supplies. So far more than 100 villages and around 500,000 people have been affected,
including some invasive plants such as blackberry (Rubus niveus). Control efforts are weed under way to them out.
samples from 28 dead pigs were sent to the Plum Island Animal disease Center in New york, where researchers found evidence of the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus, also known as blue-ear pig disease,
%fruit harvests declined by 25 %and wheat harvests dropped by 21%compared with the year before.
But there is a queue for that windfall. Landsat a US Geological Survey land-mapping mission that NASA is procuring,
Some plants, such as grape vines, can be propagated asexually using cuttings but not crops such as corn or wheat.
and blackberries few are crops. The concept of engineering apomixis in crops is so enticing that it was featured in a 2007 mystery novel called Day of the Dandelion by Peter Pringle,
so demand for meat and fruit has risen, yet the irrigation systems were designed principally for cereal production.
Some of the creatures were filmed also for a short time while eating fruits of different hardness.
The team also report that the bats can easily eat hard fruits, such as apples, that do not grow in their region.
either the bats are eating hard fruits in their habitat without anyone knowing about it or,
that their ability to eat hard fruits is a characteristic that they evolved long ago during a time period
when soft fruits were not as plentiful. The bats'strong bite and their ability to eat hard fruit is surprising
because the species was thought to live on soft fruits. The problem is we don't really know what they are eating,
says Dumont. These guys are really rare and studying their feeding habits is a challenge.
says David Berry, a partner at venture-capital firm Flagship Ventures in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The economic downturn has made it more difficult
Strawberry pesticide leaves sour taste: Nature Newsa review committee in Sacramento, California, begins on 24 september to assess the science behind methyl iodide a pesticide that has been approved for agricultural use by the US Environmental protection agency (EPA),
as its strawberry farmers are a big potential market for methyl iodide: in 2007, strawberry farmers statewide used 1. 2 million kilograms of methyl bromide, out of a total allowable usage for the United states of 6. 2 million kilograms that year.
Some 50%of California strawberry growers have moved already away from methyl bromide, often to other fumigants,
so the potential market for methyl iodide is potentially larger than these numbers imply. Japan is also considering registering the fumigant for use.
including rotating strawberries with crops such as broccoli that contain natural pest deterrents, or using steam to fumigate soils.
Apart from the initial destruction of a few tree crops like cocoa, coffee and plantain, Achaea did not pose any threat to food crops like rice,
GSK says that the Senate report cherry-picked information and mischaracterized its efforts to research
In the worst cases, lime could be spread across fields, he says. In 2005, the Chinese government launched a scheme to educate farmers on issues including fertiliser use and techniques to rebalance the soil,
People aren't discussing apples and oranges, they are talking about apples and oranges and Porsches and whales and moons,
he says. Testing solar-radiation management techniques on a global scale is given particularly daunting that detecting changes in the climate system caused by geoengineering would be nearly as difficult as measuring global warming itself.
says William Patterson, an isotope chemist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and lead author of the study1.
The insects are also emerging as a threat to crops such as green beans, cereals, vegetables and various fruits.
which are used largely for growing strawberries and tomatoes. The state has been deliberating over methyl iodide for a year
to settle the debate (see'Strawberry pesticide leaves sour taste').'The review sided with the assessment of the California DPR,
There are non-chemical alternatives to soil fumigants including planting strawberries alongside mustard or broccoli, which release chemicals that deter insects
Berry bank threatened: Europe's largest repository of rare berries and fruit faces closure after a Moscow court ruled on 11 august against an appeal to preserve it.
Pavlovsk Experimental Station, an 84-year-old gene bank outside St petersburg, houses more than 5, 000 crop varieties,
says James Peach, who heads the programme for Cancer Research UK, the charity that is leading the effort.
says Peach. In its first phase, the programme will be rolled out to as many as 12 000 NHS cancer patients over two years, beginning in early 2011.
for most of these conditions, says Peach. Testing a clinical sample for so many mutations at once is a challenge in itself.
Peach says. That is already happening at Massachusetts General, where the test is helping to establish clinical trials that wouldn't otherwise have happened
says Peach. Researchers will have access to consenting patients'genetic data as well as to medical records of the outcomes of the treatment.
says Peach. Fabrice Andrã, who runs a similar cancer diagnostic programme that has so far been offered to about 100 patients at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif
GM maize offers windfall for conventional farms: Nature Newsgenetically modified (GM CROPS can save farmers using conventional seeds even more money than those using the transgenic varieties,
The reason for the conventional farmers'windfall is tied up in the effectiveness of the transgenic crop.
Uganda prepares to plant transgenic bananas: Nature Newsscientists in Uganda will next week start field trials of a banana variety genetically engineered to resist a bacterial disease that has been decimating crops across Central africa.
The new variety is part of a wider effort to improve the East African Highland banana, a fruit so important to Ugandans that its name,
matooke, is synonymous with'food'in one of the local languages. But delays to a law regulating the commercial growing of genetically modified (GM) food in the country means it is not clear
when the improved banana could be released to farmers. The bananas have a gene from green pepper to protect against banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW
which costs farmers in Africa's Great lakes region an estimated half a billion dollars every year. Bananas infected with BXW ripen unevenly and prematurely,
and eventually the entire plant wilts and rots. The disease was originally found in Ethiopia,
Six of the eight GM banana strains developed with the green pepper gene showed 100%resistance to BXW in the lab1.
The field trials will also screen GM banana varieties with resistance to BXW for resistance to fungal diseases
These plants will grow side by side with another GM banana variety developed at the laboratory, which has been fortified with Vitamin a
especially doing research on their own variety of banana. Three African countries South africa, Egypt and Burkina faso are growing GM CROPS commercially,
who heads the country's National Banana Research Programme. Every time you tell them that,
although the mineral can also come from limestone slaked to make lime for construction, and is found in the soil used to make mud bricks.
which are important wild pollinators of fruit and vegetable crops. Several species have been domesticated and used for commercial pollination in tomato greenhouses.
Fossilized plant remains at these sites show that the Maya were growing crops such as avocados, grass species and maize.
and the woodland strawberry. Earlier this year, a team backed by food giant Mars unveiled a preliminary sequence of the cacao tree Theobroma cacao.
Although fine cocoa commands a high price, Criollo is not a great crop for farmers; it is susceptible to disease
and other cocoa genotypes, says Lanaud. This hybrid is called Trinitario, created by crossing Criollo crossed with the more common Forastero variety.
Consequently, it is very important to try to have a better knowledge of the genetic determinants of the quality traits of the cocoa.
T. cacao had some 84 candidate genes involved in lipid biosynthesis, compared with 71 in the well-studied but less flavoursome plant thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana),
These may eventually allow breeders to improve the quality and yields of the cocoa varieties.
Having two cacao genomes will be particularly valuable and should provide additional candidate genes for important traits,
The genome of the woodland strawberry, also known as the wild or alpine strawberry, is published also today in Nature Genetics2.
Fragaria vesca the fleshy shoot tips of which are technically neither fruit nor berry has a relatively small genome.
and even in other relatives of the plant such as apples and peaches, all members of the Rosaceae family.
Some species of Satsuma snail have shells that coil to the left, Â which probably evolved
but the genus Satsuma contains both dextral and sinistral species. In most land snails, the switch between dextrality and sinistrality is controlled by a single gene,
However, sinistral Satsuma snails cannot mate with their dextral relatives, leading scientists to wonder how left-coiling individuals arising from random genetic mutation would be able to find sexual partners.
Hoso and his colleagues first looked at how effectively the snake Pareas iwasakii preys on Satsuma snails.
And a DNA-based family tree of the snail genus showed that sinistrality has arisen independently at least six times in Satsuma
of Bremen, said it saw no alternative to removing Berry Smutny in order to effectively avert any further damage to the company.
Fruit-feasting fish fertilize faraway forests: Nature Newsmassive Amazonian characid fish may carry seeds more than five kilometres across forest flood plains,
Several research groups are working on fortified varieties of bean, rice, maize, sweet potato, cowpea, peanut, wheat, pumpkin and banana.
Such elegant orange shades may attract mates or help the birds blend in to their environment,
The researchers reanalysed the survey data on 97 bird species in search of differences between orange-brown birds, assigned a phaeomelanin score from 0 to 5 depending on the intensity and extent of the colours,
Pepsico is always looking for data to evaluate its supplies of corn, potatoes, oranges and oats,
which in many regions function as important fruit pollinators. Andrew Cunningham, a wildlife epidemiologist at the Institute of Zoology in London,
and lifestyles the captive pandas eat a more diverse diet that includes fruit and milk they tended to harbour similar microbe species in their guts.
The researchers found grape DNA as would be expected for containers of wine in only five of the nine jars,
as well as fruit, fish, meat and resin. He says the DNA approach offers great promise for advances in terms of analysing amphora contents from archaeologically documented wrecks,
Trend Watch Efforts to eradicate polio are bearing fruit in India, one of four countries (with Nigeria,
The team also found that some common ingredients in North american recipes milk, butter, cocoa, vanilla, cream and eggs,
and replace the Plum Island Animal disease Center, the federal government s 58-year-old BSL-3 installation off Long island in New york. But the NBAF s future has been thrown into question,
-and-mouth virus is restricted currently to Plum Island. Both the latest assessment and the review of it by the NAS, expected by June,
whether to send graduate students to Plum Island to build expertise.""We are working with Homeland Security
and the US Department of agriculture on Plum Island to develop the workforce that will ultimately work at the NBAF,
when producing fruits such as strawberries which have yields only 3%lower than in conventional farming and oilseed crops such as soybean,
The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is an increasingly popular fruit, with 145.8 million tonnes produced globally in 2010.
and was identified first in grapes (Vitis vinifera) 2, but what interests Giuliano is that a second event occurred around 60 million years ago,
and had major implications for the development of the fruit.""Several of the genes born at that second triplication stayed in the genome for tens of millions of years,
"Then, relatively recently, they changed their function this brought about the appearance of the fleshy fruit as we know it today.
The tomato is established already an model for fleshy fruit development, so the information will also be useful for breeding fruits such as strawberries, melons and bananas."
"The next thing, says Johnathan Napier, a plant biotechnologist at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, UK,"is to link this genome sequence to traits that are useful and important, especially for food security and human health
whether the United states needs a BSL-4 agricultural lab. Â The NBAF would replace the ageing Plum Island Animal disease Center,
Newman therefore calls the strategy a"lower hanging fruit.""It only works where the conditions are right,
President prunes forest reformsbrazil s vast forests lost some legal protections last week, but less than environmentalists had feared.
and waiting for a captive-breeding programme to bear fruit may not be an option. Much of the island s original vegetation is intact,
and the Plum Island Animal disease Center in New york state. One worrying aspect was that some virus samples were found to be held in facilities that had inadequate biosafety levels.
Cell structure gives African fruit its iridescent huethe hue is caused not by pigment, but by light reflecting off tightly coiled cellulose in the fruit's cell walls.
R. Fadenwhen the plant dies, the pigment in the leaves fades, but the fruit remains bright.
P. J. RUDALLTHE fruits reflect more polarized light than any other known biological substance. Ref. 1a transmission electron micrograph of the fruit's cell walls shows the layered fine structure that gives rise to the brilliant colours.
Ref. 1
Need for flu surveillance reiteratedthe emergence of the H1n1 influenza virus that leapt from pigs to humans in 2009,
triggering a global pandemic, reminded us of the need to monitor animals such as pigs that can host the development of dangerous viral strains.
and he suggests that farmers consider growing crops, such as bananas, that do better in warmer climates.
whether the industry s efforts are bearing fruit will take many years of more consistent sampling.
with fruits playing a role in luring them up, says Bloch. Proving that point is going to take many more Purgatorius fossils,
"If Pe  a Nieto starts complicated reform, he probably will not be reaping the fruits of that decision.
Most often the fungus shows up on grasses and other monocots plants often distinguished by flower parts in threes and parallel leaf venation such as pineapples, bananas and sugarcane,
but it has also been found on non-monocots such as grapes and muskmelon. It's a fungus that is not, apparently, very picky about its food.
Comparing the two estimates is like comparing"apples and oranges, he says.""They haven t really done anything to resolve this ongoing dispute
and he may not have given a fig what anyone else ate.""The take-home message is that social learning learning from others rather than through individual trial and error is a more potent force in shaping wild animals behaviour than has been recognized so far,
Pear-shaped nucleus boosts search for new physicsa lopsided atomic nucleus may help to refine nuclear theory.
The stubby pear shape, described today in Nature1, may also be pointing towards new tests of particle physics that could reveal why matter became more common than antimatter in the early moments of the Universe.
like a pear (and some may even be shaped like bananas or pyramids). However, the models do not quite agree about which nuclei are most likely to be shaped pear.
Until now, only one pear-shaped nucleus had been found experimentally: radium 226, whose shape was sketched out back in 19932.
That isotope was relatively easy to work with because it is long-lived. Other putatively pear-shaped peers are highly unstable and difficult to handle.
To look for more pears, Peter Butler, a physicist at the University of Liverpool, UK, and his colleagues fired a high-energy proton beam at a piece of uranium carbide in the ISOLDE isotope mass separator facility at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland."
"A whole cauldron of isotopes is made when you splat protons onto the target, says Butler.
pear. Not an elongated conference pear, more like a short-necked comice or Anjou (see video below.
With two known pear-shaped nuclei, physicists can now start to tease apart the theoretical models.
The cluster model, for example, treats pears like helium nuclei stuck onto the sides of plain spheres,
and predicts that the lighter isotopes of radium should be more strongly pear shaped than the heavier ones.
In fact, the latest results show that radium 224 is lopsided less than radium 226, calling the cluster model into doubt.
Butler says that type of simple description does not work for his pear-shaped radium.
If that is so, pear-shaped nuclei should have the strongest electric dipoles, and measuring these could help researchers to choose between the various models.
It is black and the size of a large cherry.""You can roast them and pound them
breast milk was supplemented with'paps'made of soft bread and apples. Neither cereals nor breast milk contain much Vitamin d
and fruit contains none. Sixteenth-century thinking also dictated that infants be swaddled heavily. The Medici children, wrapped in many heavy layers
Grape remains were found near the fifth century bc artefact. The team found tartaric acid which occurs in grapes, in all of the jars strong evidence that they once contained wine.
The analyses also revealed the characteristic fingerprints of pine resin, as well as herbs such as rosemary and basil,
Archaeologists had thought once that it may have been used for pressing olives, but the platform looks remarkably similar to a grape press depicted on a contemporaneous piece of Greek pottery (see picture at top).
Grape seeds and skins were also found scattered nearby.""The combination of botanical and chemical evidence makes a pretty tight argument that wine was being produced at Lattara,
says Mcgovern.""There s been a lot of hypothesizing about shipping wine across the Mediterranean, he adds.""But it s never been shown chemically.
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