and Richard Coke of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Bangkok Thailand wrote in an editorial accompanying the report in the journal.
and Coke said. Some animal studies also suggested that H7n9 can spread between mammals. But so far the virus does not appear to spread efficiently there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission with H7n9 Rudge
and Coke said. In the case of the father and daughter the daughter was involved deeply in caring for her father she cleaned up his mucus
and Coke said. The report provides a timely reminder of the need to remain extremely vigilant Rudge
and Coke said. The threat posed by H7n9 has passed by no means. Follow Rachael Rettner@Rachaelrettner. Follow Livescience@livescience Facebook & Google+.
crops include stellar wine grapes nuts and kiwis. Agricultural pesticides and fungicides have been detected more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the east in the rural Sierra nevada's snow water air and amphibians.
which rely more heavily on rodents for food than fisher cats do. Spotted owls have tested positive for rodenticides in Oregon
We count on farmers to produce safe and abundant supplies of food but it s runoff from farmland that finds its way into the lake
and ranchers to be paid for providing benefits healthy food clean air and water and wildlife habitat to all of society.
It s the processors and brand-name companies like Kellogg s Coca-cola General mills Walmart and Mcdonald's.
Although many vertebrates became extinct during this period mammals that are familiar to us today including apes cattle deer rabbits kangaroos wallabies bears
Birds flourished during this period including members of the duck geese hawk and eagle families.
and other creatures for limited supplies of food and water as a good portion of the water was frozen.
and alkaloids isolated from natural herbs have found their way into the neat little pills people get from the pharmacy today.
In a nod to the world's 30000 herbs that belong to a storied history of healing botanists have gathered 500 medicinal plants for a living exhibition called Wild Medicine here at the New york Botanical garden.
if but it was used historically as a remedy for a wide range of ails many
Are herbs safe? Medicinal herbs are used still widely in their leafy form with 4. 5 billion people worldwide who incorporate plants into their health regimen Balick said.
He lists among his favorite examples ginger to settle stomachs turmeric to cut inflammation and pot marigold to treat wounds of the skin.
Though there is evidence to support the effectiveness of many herbs these plants aren't regulated by the Food
and Drug Administration because the agency considers them food. Drug companies can't patent herbs and they aren't as rigorously tested as pharmaceuticals.
What's more two different batches of the same herb could vary widely in their potency because of the environment in
which they were grown making it difficult to exactly reproduce the plant's effects. 5 Foul Things That Are Good for you Balick doesn't administer care to people My patients are green he says
and he is emphatic that all medicines herbs and pills alike should be taken under the supervision of a physician.
That said the botanist does believe there is some unnecessary fear about herbal medicine. Like all remedies herbs must be taken in the larger context of a person's overall health.
And like prescription drugs herbs can sometimes have harmful interactions with other substances. Grapefruit juice might be the best-known example.
In addition to the powerful antioxidant Vitamin c the juice contains a chemical that can disable enzymes needed to break down medications in the digestive system.
This means that consuming grapefruit can spike the potency of a long list of drugs such as cholesterol-lowering statins.
Vanishing wisdom Many of the plants featured in Wild Medicine sit in a replica of Italy's Orto Botanico di Padova in Padua a UNESCO World Heritage site
And when they didn't have access to the herbs themselves they would have hit the books.
#Poop Sausage to Pee Drinks: 7 Gross'Human Foods'With food taste is highly subjective.</
</p><p>From<a href=http://www. livescience. com/39165-worlds-priciest-coffee-test. html>coffee pooped out by Southeast Asian cats</a>to jellied chicken'
s blood humans eat a wide variety of foods that many others would consider revolting.</
</p><p>But some people are pushing the definition of food group to a whole new level by trying to incorporate human waste and bacteria into the food chain.
From infant poop sausage to belly button cheese here are some of the most revolting "
Sophisticated smell analysis revealed that bacterial delicacies smelled a lot like their original owners' body odor.
but a a href=http://www. livescience. com/41015-metabolomics-wine-and-cheese-curing-disease-no-doping-please. html>wine
and cheese</a>pairing did allow the curious to get a good whiff of the novel cheese.</
</p><p>Though breast milk is thought to be the best food for babies some foodies have been trying to expand the market for human milk beyond toddlers and the occasional curious partner.
The Lady Cheese Shop. " Another London shop briefly sold<a href=http://www. myhealthnewsdaily. com/1008-breast-milk-ice-cream-seized. html>breast-milk ice-cream pops</a>until the health department confiscated the milky treats
</p><p>Not content with stealing food from the mouths of babes other scientists have wondered
sausages. In a 2013 study in the journal Food Microbiology researchers speculated on the ability to harvest bacteria from<a href=http://www. livescience. com/4141-moms-prefer-smell-baby-poop. html>infant poop
</a>mostly<em>Lactobacillus gasseri</em>and<em>Enterococcus faecalis</em>as the starter for fermenting sausages.
The study researchers found that a few strains of<em>Lactobacillus</em>seemed to be best for jump-starting the fermentation process.
No word yet on the food product' s flavor though.</</p><p>Many people have drunk urine throughout history for cultural reasons with some alternative medicine practitioners claiming the substance'
s possible to harvest the nutrients and minerals in human pee as brine for fermentation. "
And because urine is so high in salts and minerals it could also lead to dehydration if drunk as a stand-alone beverage.<
<a href=http://www. space. com/20867-astronauts-drink-urine-and-other-wastewater-video. html>Video:
Astronauts Drink Urine and Other Waste</a p><p>The trend of new moms eating their placenta after giving birth has been on the rise in certain segments of the U s. population for years now.
Many women have been freezing and turning their<a href=http://www. livescience. com/2470-gooey-origin-human-placenta-revealed. html>placenta</a>into pill form to eat after they give birth.
whether the foods they eat influence the flavor of sperm. Two of the three women claimed they could distinguish differences.</
neglected as a food. " Another book by the same author Paul " Fotie" Photenhauer aims to teach readers how to mix cocktails using the fluid.
Of course there' s a good chance these books are purchased mainly as gag gifts.</</p><p>For every weird food concoction that'
s knowingly consumed by humans there are a slew of contaminated foods guaranteed to turn any stomach.
From melamine-tainted milk to " avatar" pork laced with phosphorescent bacteria that glows blue China has had its share of scary food products.
Apparently the glow-in-the-dark pork was safe to eat if well cooked. The United states isn'
t immune to food scares either: the process of rinsing ground beef in ammonia to remove potential bacteria caused also some indigestion
when it was revealed.</</p><p>But urban legends and news reports have also spread some food hoaxes over the years.
For instance in 2011 a story picked up by the Daily mail Discovery News and Livescience from a Youtube video claimed that a scientist was making hamburger meat from proteins extracted from raw sewage.
The<a href=http://www. livescience. com/14669-poop-meat-safety. html>poop burgers</a>turned out to be a hoax.</
</p p
#Precision farming Gains Global Foothold (Op-Ed) Lloyd Treinish leads the environmental science team in the Industry Solutions Department at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research center.
A co-developer of IBM's Deep Thunder precision agriculture system he contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
and by 2050 food production must increase by at least 70 percent to keep pace. Unfortunately about half of the world's food is consumed never due to inefficiencies in the harvesting storage and delivery of crops.
Even in developed nations about 30 percent of purchased food ends up going to waste and supply-chain inefficiencies only exacerbate the problem.
Certainly weather-related events like the current and long-lasting drought in portions of the U s. add further complexity to the science of farming as resultant crop damage food supply shortages
and rising commodities prices frequently illustrate. To help reverse this sobering trend and to generate enough food to meet the ever-growing demands of a growing global population today's
and tomorrow's agribusinesses need to embrace smarter farming methods. Fortunately the technology to do so is available and working right now.
and more food makes it to the dinner table. The development and use of those predictive analytics based techniques and technologies is limited not to mega-farms.
which routes and methods will be fastest to transport harvested food. That is especially critical in countries like Brazil where many of the roads are unpaved
and color sucking the mineral salts out of the soil chasing one another rolling around in mud-pits
Elsewhere in the clearing known as the Dzanga Bai I was awed by bongo buffalo sitatunga and hundreds of birds.
and to walk in the forest with Ba'Aka pygmies collecting medicinal herbs. I often think of Mekema my trusted Ba'Aka friend
#Produce From Urban Gardens Could Contain Lead Urban food gardens offer a great source of affordable nutritious fruits
In places where the soil is contaminated heavily urban food production may raise as many public health concerns as it solves said Samantha Langley-Turbaugh a soil scientist at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.
To put that in perspective a packet of artificial sweetener usually contains 1 gram of sweetener.
Contact with the soil itself may pose an even greater concern than eating contaminated vegetables said Mielke.
Also it's important to wash produce thoroughly before eating it to make sure no soil remains on the food added Mielke.
Before planting a food garden Langley-Turnbaugh recommends testing the soil for contamination. Most states offer low-cost soil testing through their agricultural cooperative extensions.
#Protecting the Nation's Drinking water Means Protecting Forests (Op-Ed) Kathy Abusow is president and CEO of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.
Investing in land protection to protect sources of drinking water is smart both economically and environmentally.
and management to protect drinking-water quality. Dozens of communities across the country are taking similar steps to protect their watersheds.
Behind the World Championship of Pumpkin Hurling It's not unusual to enjoy a plentiful helping of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving.
The scientists found that fractal dimension predicted immune responsiveness meaning that partridges with more complex fractals on their plumage tended to have stronger immune systems.
and fractals by restricting the diets of 33 male and female partridges during their molting period while letting 35 others eat as much as they liked.
This resulted in the first set of birds weighing around 13 percent less than the control group.
The researchers then photographed the partridges'bibs and found the complexity of fractals was reduced significantly on the birds
whose food had been restricted. After losing weight the same birds would grow in plumage with a lower fractal dimension than they had before while the birds
#Quail Moms Customize Their Egg Camouflage Quail eggs are like fingerprints a new study suggests.
The creamy blue-and-brown speckled eggs splashed like a toddler's art project vary among birds
What's more in a laboratory experiment quail camouflaged their eggs according to their personal pattern picking lighter sand for less-speckled eggs and darker sand for eggs with more brown splotches.
What surprised researchers was the discovery that quail changed their approach to camouflage as their eggs got darker.
It's as if they knew the characteristics of their own eggs and chose the best substrate with
Quail camouflage Sitting at the bottom of the food chain with a spot on just about every predator's dinner menu quail
and their eggs need good hiding places. In the experiment quail could lay clutches in sand with white yellow red or black hues.
Researchers photographed each spot where the quail laid eggs and each location they ignored. The images revealed
whether quail moms picked the sand color that offered the most camouflage. They did really really well Lovell told Ouramazingplanet.
More than 50 percent of the time quail chose the sand color offering the best or second-best protection for their own egg pattern the study found.
The amazing thing is this change in strategy for the different eggs Lovell said. Quail with the creamiest egg colors picked white or yellow sand.
This strategy called background matching aims to hide the eggs by blending into a similarly-colored background.
Quail with darker more splotchy eggs conceal their eggs not by matching a background color
but by trying to break up the egg's outline through its color pattern an approach called disruptive coloration.
The same strategy the military uses in its camouflage patterning the egg splotches disrupt its own outline with the colors
and patterns on its shell Lovell explained. What the spots seem to be doing it making a predator think an egg is different from an egg shape he said.
Seeing splotches The quail were raised in captivity at the University of Glasgow in Scotland and had seen their eggs before the experiment started.
 It's possible that they learn the patterning through seeing eggs that they've laid Lovell said.
In the wild there is some evidence that birds are often less successful with their first clutch of eggs.
It may be that at that point in time they're not able to select the best place to lay their eggs.
Scientists think birds use patterning on eggs for camouflage but the darker colors may also help strengthen weak spots
or regulate temperature Lovell said. The shell color comes from two pigments: blue-green biliverdin and red-brown protoporphyrin which are both breakdown products of hemoglobin (the oxygen-carrying protein found in the red blood cells of all vertebrates.
Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork. com. Follow her on Twitter@beckyoskin. Follow Ouramazingplanet on Twitterâ@OAPLANET. We're also onâ Facebookâ and Google+d
-and-white chicks stumble out of the nest pecking for food. They feed themselves from day one Vyn said in the video.
Vyn camped out a tent and a blind with only a sleeping bag for warmth waiting for the eggs to hatch.
me exciting and nerve-wracking waiting for three days in this windstorm for these four eggs to hatch he said.
Vyn filmed the only nest with eggs in 2011: The other 20 eggs were bred in captivity
and the chicks released in Russia to make their 4971-mile (8000 kilometer) migration to Southeast asia.
And shorebirds are a food source for people living along the coastal mudflats of Myanmar
Raw milk is riskier than most foods said Douglas Powell a professor of food safety at Kansas State university.
While certainly a larger number of people get sick yearly from eating tainted tomatoes or lettuce there are many more consumers of those foods than consumers of raw milk he said.
Bacteria commonly found in the digestive tracts of farm animals including campylobacter and E coli O157 can easily find their way into milk as it is pumped
1 in 6 Who Drink It Gets Sick On average one in six people who drink raw milk becomes ill with bacterial or parasite infections according to researchers at the Minnesota Department of health.
Top 7 Germs in Food that Make You Sick The researchers noted that their study is limited in several ways by the data available to them.
and foodborne illnesses because it can contain harmful bacteria that are killed not during pasteurization. However raw milk advocates claim it is healthier
Pregnant Women & Infants Shouldn't Drink It, Pediatricians Say Pregnant women infants and children who drink raw milk are at particularly high risk of developing serious life-threatening illnesses said a leading U s. group of pediatricians.
or unpasteurized milk and its products such as cheese and encourages pediatricians to contact their state representatives to support such a ban according to the statement published today (Dec 16) in the journal Pediatrics.
although the Food and Drug Administration banned the interstate sale of unpasteurized milk in 1987.
Top 7 Germs in Food that Make You Sick Over the past decade consumption of raw milk has resulted in 93 illness outbreaks 1837 illnesses 195 hospitalizations and two deaths according to the Centers for Disease
because it contains natural factors that are inactivated by pasteurization. However such claims haven't been proven scientifically the AAP said.
In contrast there is strong evidence that pasteurization does not alter the nutritional value of milk the researchers said.
which has very specific procedures and rituals for the sacrifice (and typically sacrifice chickens or goats not horses).
and other carrion-eating animals to scavenge on or even carry off these mysteriously missing body parts.
A c. Mace a member of Carter's archaeological team was killed by arsenic poisoning. Carter's personal secretary was found smothered in his bed in 1929.
This April police in Cook County Ill. found a decapitated goat tied to a tree near a golf course.
5 Risks of Raw Vegan Diet On the road to good health there are many forks. Some paths such as vegetarianism or the Mediterranean diet have considerable science supporting them.
Others such as the vegan or plant-based diet which shuns all animal products including eggs and dairy are winning converts.
And then there's a new offshoot the raw vegan diet which deems cooking to be unnatural and unhealthy.
An increasing number of celebrities most recently tennis sensation Venus williams swear by this diet as the best way to prevent
and reverse diseases and to stay young and vital. Testimonials from ordinary folks are endless boasting advantages along the lines of having more energy better skin improved relationships with woodland creatures and so on
But on your road to good health the raw vegan diet would likely be a U-turn.
If you are already vegan or vegetarian you have nothing to gain and much to lose by going totally or even mostly raw.
Even doctors who prescribe and live by a vegan diet caution their patients against attempting a raw diet.
The reason? You would greatly reduce the types of foods you can eat. And you would do so in vain
because most of the raw vegan principles are based on misconceptions about human nutrition and work counter to good health. 7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe This article addresses five such principles that are either half true or completely false.
What is raw veganism? First a primer: Raw veganism is based a plant diet that involves no cooking.
No food is heated above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius. Foods are eaten fresh dehydrated with low heat or fermented.
A core tenet of the diet is that heating food above 104 degrees not only diminishes its nutrients
but also makes the food toxic and less digestible. In raw vegan parlance cooking is killing.
Many raw vegans speak of live foods versus dead foods and they aren't talking about sushi so fresh it still wiggles.
Live or uncooked foods are said to be filled with vital life energy. In this way raw veganism is an extension of the vegan appreciation for animal welfare with the added spirituality of a life force called chi or prana.
Dead or cooked foods are said to be depleted of their life energy as well as most of their nutrients.
Juicing and blending green smoothies often are key elements of this diet. Now for the misconceptions:
Misconception#1: Cooking destroys nutrients Sure raw foods can be nutritious. But cooking breaks apart fibers
and cellular walls to release nutrients that otherwise would be unavailable from the same raw food.
Cooking tomatoes for example increases by fivefold the bioavailability of the antioxidant lycopene. Similarly cooking carrots makes the beta-carotene they contain more available for the body to absorb.
Soups are full of nutrients that would not be available in a pot of raw carrots onions parsnips and potatoes.
Science You Can Eat: 10 Interesting Facts About Food Cooking can also reduce certain chemicals in a vegetable that inhibit the absorption of minerals including important minerals like zinc iron calcium and magnesium.
Cooking spinach makes more iron and calcium available from its leaves for example. Admittedly some nutrients are lost in cooking such as Vitamin c and certain B vitamins.
But plants are so excess in nutrients that even this breakdown is insignificant in practical terms said John Mcdougall creator of the Mcdougall Program a vegan-friendly starch-based diet.
And by eating both raw and cooked foods you get the best of both worlds said Jennifer Nelson director of clinical dietetics at the Mayo Clinic and associate professor of nutrition at the Mayo Medical school in Rochester Minn.
Overcooking and charring can be a problem. Boiling the life out of greens will indeed reduce the nutrient load.
And charring meats and vegetables creates cancer-causing chemicals. The solution however is not to stop all cooking
but rather to steam lightly sautã or stir fry vegetables and to make more soups. Fermenting or juicing raw foods also can make some nutrients more available
but that shouldn't deter from the fact that cooking is an ancient craft that makes some foods more digestible and nutritious.
As for the concept of life energy in raw food this is a spiritual belief beyond the realm of science so debating its benefit let alone existence would be futile.
Misconception#2: Cooking destroys enzymes This one is absolutely true but it doesn't matter.
Yes heat destroys enzymes. But humans make their own digestive enzymes to break down large food molecules into smaller ones.
The raw-enzyme logic itself breaks down when you consider that most humans cook food
and that most humans are digesting that food reasonably well. Ironically for the raw vegan most of the plant enzymes in raw food get destroyed anyway in the acid of the human gut.
Only a few make it to the small intestine. Fermented foods such as sauerkraut can carry enzymes into the gut.
Their contribution to digestion is not zero but it does appear to be minimal. I know of no importance of plant enzymes in human digestion said Mcdougall.
The enzyme theory for raw foods dates back to Edward Howell a physician who published a book on enzymes in the 1940s primarily citing research from the 1920s and 30s.
We now know however that almost all nutrients are absorbed in the small intestine and that digestion at that stage relies almost entirely on human-generated bile and pancreatic enzymes.
A corollary myth is that humans have a finite number of enzymes and that once they are used up these enzymes are gone.
This idea too was hatched by Howell. But where would this packet of enzymes reside? Howell never said.
But in reality humans make new enzymes throughout their lifetimes. Misconception#3: Raw foods are detoxifying Dietary detoxification is an alternative medicine concept with little scientific credibility.
Usually two organs are cited as needing detoxification: the liver and the colon. In reality toxins can accumulate anywhere in the body particularly in fat and fatty tissue but also in proteins and bone.
The colon is surprisingly low in toxins however. As for the liver the confusion is that this organ filters toxins
and must therefore the reasoning goes be loaded with toxins. But the liver is more of a chemical-processing plant than a filter;
it breaks down toxins as they pass through. That is the liver doesn't have extra toxins by virtue of it being the body's natural toxin-neutralizer.
Wishful thinking: 6'Magic bullet'Cures That Don't Exist Another argument is that burning fat in this case on a raw vegan diet would release toxins from the body.
But fat cells don't burn up as if into ashes liberating their contents. Fats cells merely get bigger or smaller depending on the amount of fat within the cell that's used.
It is unclear how much of a toxin if any would be set free if the fat molecule it is attached to is burned.
The toxin is now free to attach to other fat molecules. If it does mobilize with other recently liberated toxins in the case of extreme starvation then the toxin could become toxic
and overwhelm the liver. In short there are no foods or herbs that can magically bind and pull toxins from your blood or organs.
The same would be true for cows or for any vegan animals that accumulate toxins in their fat;
they don't cleanse themselves with their raw plant-based diet. At best detoxification schemes (juicing fasting) can help by virtue of not placing more toxins in our body for a day or two.
And a healthful plant-rich diet with plenty of water can in general help your liver
and kidneys process and remove toxins more effectively Mcdougall said. Misconception#4: Raw veganism is healthful Healthfulness
when eating a raw vegan diet is a challenge; it's not inherent. Many on the diet do lose weight by consuming fewer calories.
But weight loss should not be the ultimate goal. The most apparent problems are nutritional deficiencies particularly for vitamins B12 and D selenium zinc iron and two omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA.
Without taking supplements in pill form it would be very difficult (and for B12 impossible) to obtain a sufficient amount of these nutrients from raw plant-based foods. 5 Key Nutrients Women Need as They Age Also without access to a variety of foods year-round that can
be eaten raw one tends to rely on single-food sources. The problem with the raw food diet is where do you get your energy food?
asked Caldwell Esselstyn of the Cleveland Clinic the doctor who convinced Bill clinton to adopt a plant-based diet.
You get it from pouring down nuts he said and these are high in fat and not healthful when eaten in excess.
Some people on a raw food diet rely so much on fruit that their teeth begin to erode:
from acids in the fruits that wear down the tooth enamel from sugar promoting decay from dried fruit (another raw vegan staple) sticking to the teeth
The raw diet could be more healthful than the so-called S. A d. standard American diet) of processed foods.
But there is no evidence that even given the resources to prepare a variety of raw foods daily the raw vegan diet would be more healthful than the plant-based diets promoted by Mcdougall
or Esselstyn or than the diets that allow modest amounts of animal products. Vegans would have to ask themselves what the added benefit would be from going raw
if the raw diet offers no additional moral satisfaction other than a reduced use of cooking fuel.
Misconception#5: Raw-only foods are natural No other animal cooks food many a raw vegan has stated.
One can just as well say that no other animal combines their kale and clover with tropical bananas in a high-speed blender to make the foods more palatable and digestible.
Or that no other animal plays chess. Judging what is natural is a slippery slope.
Humans around the world live to relatively similar ages on a multitude of different diets.
Most of the reasonable diets that consist of grains vegetables and meats will get you to at least age 70
if an accident or infectious disease doesn't kill you first. A traditional animal-based diet eaten by natives of Siberia is
just as natural as a traditional diet eaten by unnamed tribes in the Amazon. That said no known human culture has attempted ever to survive solely on raw plant foods.
It is the raw-only diet that is unnatural because it is impossible to survive on this diet without modern conveniences such as refrigerators storage devices and easy access to packaged foods such as the aforementioned shelled nuts.
In fact a child raised on a raw vegan diet without proper supplementation would likely develop severe neurological and growth problems due to a lack of Vitamin b12 and other nutrients.
Adults who have eaten animal products for more than 20 years by contrast have the benefit of relying on bodily stores of certain key nutrients.
In a natural setting without electricity anyone located outside of a narrow belt of land near the equators
which have year-round growth potential would need to dedicate their entire day to growing gathering preserving
and storing food. Even around the tropics where vegetation is plentiful humans have been cooking as long as humans have been human at least 200000 years and likely longer in our hominid form.
Most scientists are in agreement that a combination of first eating meat and then cooking food enabled the development of the human brain.
Cooking in particular opened up a new world of calories and nutrients. The human brain after all requires a lot of energy.
Eating Meat Made Us Human Study Suggests Our raw-vegan cousin the gorilla has three times the body size of humans but one-third the brain cells;
it grew muscular on plants but not smarter. According to a study published in October 2012 the gorilla would have needed to eat raw plants for more than 12 hours a day to consume enough calories to evolve a humanlike brain.
This myth busting is intended not to belittle the much-maligned raw vegan but rather to inform rawists of the realities of this challenging diet.
Christopher Wanjek is the author of a new novel Hey Einstein! a comical nature-versus-nurture tale about raising clones of Albert Einstein in less than-ideal settings.
His column Bad Medicine appears regularly on Livescience
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