#Differences between marathon mice and couch potato mice reveal key to muscle fitnessresearchers discovered that small pieces of genetic material called micrornas link the two defining characteristics of fit muscles:
the ability to burn sugar and fat and the ability to switch between slow-and fast-twitch muscle fibers.
1) burn fat and sugars and2) switch between slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscles. According to Kelly muscle fitness only occurs
One example would be the wine making sector Pelegrã commented where an electronic nose capable of distinguishing the quality
or type of grape or recognising the vintage a wine belongs to would be very useful.
#Biomechanical performances of old-fashioned leather and modern football helmets comparedresearchers at the Center for Injury Biomechanics at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg Virginia compared the relative safety afforded by two 1930-vintage leather football helmets
Each vintage leather helmet was subjected to 12 drop tests; the 48-and 60-inch drop tests were undertaken not
when covered by vintage helmets. Drop testing of modern helmets was conducted during an earlier study at
Drop testing of vintage helmets was undertaken for the present investigation. The ten modern helmets were split into two groups:
The two vintage helmets constituted a third helmet group. Based on the results of the drop tests the researchers calculated each helmet group's average peak accelerations for each head form position and each drop height.
Rowson and colleagues found that vintage leather helmets were associated with substantially greater peak accelerations for each drop height than all modern helmets.
#Scientists alarmed by rapid spread of brown streak disease in cassavacassava experts are reporting new outbreaks
and the increased spread of Cassava Brown Streak Disease or CBSD warning that the rapidly proliferating plant virus could cause a 50 percent drop in production of a crop that provides a significant source of food and income for 300 million Africans.
--which is used also to produce starch flour biofuel and even beer--as the perfect crop for helping to feed a continent where growing conditions in many regions are deteriorating in the face of climate change.
Cassava is already incredibly important for Africa and is poised to play an even bigger role in the future
The spread of the disease to West Africa and particularly Nigeria is a major cause for concern experts say
which are used in everything from food products to textiles plywood and paper. Nigeria hopes to mimic the success of countries in Southeast asia where a cassava-driven starch industry now generates US$5 billion per year
and shifting rainfall patterns caused by climate change threaten the future viability of food staples such as maize and wheat.
This toxic mix of circumstances affecting a tiny fly threatens to shoot down the Rambo root bringing the misery of food insecurity to vast swathes of Africa.
You literally have a situation where human beings are competing for food--with whiteflies. Farmers also help spread the disease by planting new fields with infected stem cuttings.
while it would take several years for the disease to spread across the continent via whiteflies alone infected stem cuttings could spark outbreaks in new areas overnight.
#Zeal to ensure clean leafy greens takes bite out of riverside habitat in Californiameticulous attention to food safety is a good thing.
and beyond food safety mandates to ensure that healthy fresh fruits and vegetables do not carry bacteria
But in California's Salinas Valley some more vigorous interventions are cutting into the last corners of wildlife habitat and potentially threatening water quality without evidence of food safety benefits.
and food safety where none need exist say scientists for The Nature Conservancy writing in the Ecological Society of America's journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
Farming practices for food safety that target wildlife are damaging valuable ecological systems despite low risk from these animals said lead author Sasha Gennet.
Salad is big business in California. In the aftermath of a deadly 2006 Escherichia coli serotype O157:
Although scant evidence exists of risk of food-borne disease spread by wildlife the risk of rejection of produce by major buyers is too much for most growers to bear say Gennet
An overabundance of fertilizer has created problems for domestic drinking water as well as the ecosystems of the Salinas River watershed and its outlet Monterey Bay.
California has a big problem with concentrated nutrients in waterways and there is a lot of pressure on growers to reduce those inputs
and not asking does the food system create a healthy human environment? Schulte Moore works with Iowa farmers to incorporate native grassland habitat alongside corn and soy fields.
Her experiments look for native grass mixtures that don't tend to invade the crops and are highly attractive to beneficial native insects including the natural enemies of agricultural pests.
As a community we need to approach food health wildlife health and water health in the Salinas Valley as parts of an integrated system.
This follows the European Food safety Authority finding that they pose a high acute risk to honey bees.
He argues that we should not allow farmers spray a toxic soup of chemicals onto their crops.
A combination of these two pesticides types had a stronger impact suggesting the combined soup of pesticides could be causing more serious harm.
Few people would disagree that we need to protect our food production but it shouldn't be at the cost of damaging the environment Potts said adding:
but will almost certainly have much greater long-term costs for food production and the environment.
Antioxidant-rich diets containing lots of fruits and vegetables consistently correlate with reduced hypertension. In this study conducted at the University of Michigan Health System hypertensive heart failure-prone rats were fed a grape-enriched diet for 18 weeks.
The results reproduced earlier findings that grape consumption reduced the occurrence of heart muscle enlargement and fibrosis and improved the diastolic function of the heart.
and heart health but will also provide translational information on the value of dietary (whole foods)
and dietary supplement approaches for prevention of heart disease stemming from chronic hypertension. The NIH grant is allowing the team at the University of Michigan Medical System to expand its work in this important area
Figs and fig trees are familiar to a wide cross-section of human society both as a common food and for their spiritual importance.
In Bolivia soul-stealing spirits dwell in the canopy of figs and walking under or felling these trees can cause illness.
The fig is an important food source for both humans and animals in both fresh and dried form.
and leaves of fig trees are used for animal fodder which can sustain livestock through otherwise lean periods.
In addition to being a food source the bark and roots from fig trees are used for manufacturing items such as barkcloth handicrafts shields and buildings.
Milk proteins can also be found in glue paper ink and in other children's lunches.
Teachers should be informed about foods and other triggers that might cause health problems for children said Sublett.
The diet restricted foods high in the sugar-binding protein lectin generally regarded as a healthy nutrient.
The restricted foods included grains beans fruit poultry and plants belonging to the nightshade family
These findings represent a fundamental paradigm shift in how the diseases of the'Western Diet'should be treated said Steven R. Gundry M d. lead author
and medical director of the International Heart & Lung Institute at The Center for Restorative Medicine in Palm springs Calif. Simple removal of'healthy'lectin-containing foods
or other healthy foods from their diets said the American Heart Association which recommends consuming a diet with plenty of fruits vegetables whole grains and fish.
Rice grown as a staple food for a large portion of the world's population absorbs arsenic from the environment and transfers it to the grain.
Long-term exposure to arsenic has been associated with skin lung bladder liver kidney and prostate cancers and low levels can cause skin lesions diarrhea and other symptoms.
when arsenic was detected in baby foods made from rice. In regions of the world where rice is the major component of the human diet the health of entire communities of people can be impacted negatively by arsenic contamination of rice.
Arsenic may occur naturally in the soil as it does in many parts of Southeast asia
With this bacteria you could implement easy low-cost strategies that farmers could use that would reduce arsenic in the human food chain.
Previous research by Ken Schmidt of Texas Tech University and Chris Whelan of Illinois Natural history Survey documented that these carnivores can prey more easily on native bird eggs
because buckthorn is an undesirable food source and also due to the increased prevalence of coyotes.
Research shows that deer fawns are a relatively common food item for Chicago-area coyotes.
Some components of the nectar and pollen grains bees collect to manufacture food to support the hive increase the expression of detoxification genes that help keep honey bees healthy.
Bees feed on hundreds of different types of nectar and pollen and are exposed potentially to thousands of different types of phytochemicals yet they only have one-third to one-half the inventory of enzymes that break down these toxins compared to other species Berenbaum said.
Determining which of the 46 P450 genes in the honey bee genome are used to metabolize constituents of their natural diet and
because different nectars went in to make the honey. If you don't know what your next meal is going to be how does your detoxification system know which enzymes to upregulate?
Berenbaum said. Research had shown previously that eating honey turns on detoxification genes that metabolize the chemicals in honey
but the researchers wanted to identify the specific components responsible for this activity. To do this they fed bees a mixture of sucrose and powdered sugar called bee candy
and added different chemical components in extracts of honey. They identified p-coumaric acid as the strongest inducer of the detoxification genes.
It's a great signal that tells their systems that food is coming in and with that food so are potential toxins Berenbaum said.
Her team showed that p-coumaric acid turns on not only P450 genes but representatives of every other type of detoxification gene in the genome.
Many commercial beekeepers use honey substitutes such as high-fructose corn syrup or sugar water to feed their colonies.
Berenbaum believes the new research shows that honey is a rich source of biologically active materials that truly matter to a bee.
and dump p-coumaric acid into their high fructose corn syrup she hopes that her team's research can be used as the basis of future work aimed at improving bee health.
because if you look at the evolutionary history of Apis mellifera this species did not evolve with high fructose corn syrup.
It is clear that honey bees are adapted highly to consuming honey as part of their diet.
#New plant protein discoveries could ease global food and fuel demandsnew discoveries of the way plants transport important substances across their biological membranes to resist toxic metals
and pests increase salt and drought tolerance control water loss and store sugar can have profound implications for increasing the supply of food
and energy for our rapidly growing global population. That's the conclusion of 12 leading plant biologists from around the world whose laboratories recently discovered important properties of plant transport proteins that collectively could have a profound impact on global agriculture.
They report in the May 2nd issue of the journal Nature that the application of their findings could help the world meet its increasing demand for food
These membrane transporters are a class of specialized proteins that plants use to take up nutrients from the soil transport sugar
and resist toxic substances like salt and aluminum said Julian Schroeder a professor of biology at UC San diego who brought together 11 other scientists from Australia Japan Mexico Taiwan the U s
. and the U k. to collaborate on a paper describing how their discoveries collectively could be used to enhance sustainable food and fuel production.
Schroeder who is also co-director of a new research entity at UC San diego called Food and Fuel for the 21st Century
which is designed to apply basic research on plants to sustainable food and biofuel production said many of the recent discoveries in his
and carbohydrates in their diets the biologists write in their paper. An additional billion people are malnourished
because their diets lack required micronutrients such as iron zinc and Vitamin a. These dietary deficiencies have an enormous negative impact on global health resulting in increased susceptibility to infection
During the next four decades an expected additional two billion humans will require nutritious food. Along with growing urbanization increased demand for protein in developing countries coupled with impending climate change
Increasing food production on limited land resources will rely on innovative agronomic practices coupled to the genetic improvement of crops.
One of Schroeder's research advances led to the discovery of a sodium transporter that plays a key role in protecting plants from salt stress
which impairs the uptake of water and nutrients. From their recent findings the plant biologists now understand how transport proteins control processes that allow roots to tolerate toxic aluminum.
or low-yielding acidic soils into astonishingly productive farmland to grow crops for food and biofuels.
and zinc in food crops to improve their nutritive qualities. Over two billion people suffer from iron
and zinc deficiencies because their plant-based diets are not a sufficiently rich source of these essential elements the biologists write.
The scientists also discovered transporters in plants and symbiotic soil fungi that allow crops to acquire phosphate--an element essential for plant growth
Nevertheless only 20 to 30 of the phosphate and 30 to 50 percent of the nitrogen fertilizer applied are utilized by plants.
and pursue new promising avenues of plant improvement in light of food and energy demands and the need for sustainable yield gains.
and rapid response can be most effective to slow the spread of introduced and potentially invasive plant species. Nonnative or introduced plants are those species growing in areas where they are not normally found.
The data set collected from 2001 to 2008 includes a sample of all trees shrubs vines herbs grasses fern
#Sushi for peccaries? It turns out the white-lipped peccary--a piglike animal from Central and South america--will settle for fish
when fruits (its main food) are no longer on the menu according to the Wildlife Conservation Society
and partners revealing the first-ever photos of fish-eating peccaries. The images of fish consumption by white-lipped peccaries were taken by Douglas Fernandes in the Brazilian Pantanal wetlands one morning back in 2011.
It was then that Fernandes noticed three of the peccaries eating traira or wolf fish from the oxygen-starved ponds.
We know that peccaries are primarily fruit-eaters but will consume aquatic plants tubers grasses and small invertebrates such as insect larvae worms and snails when fruits are said scarce Dr. Keuroghlian.
As a major fruit-eater the white-lipped peccary plays an important ecological role in rainforests and other habitats as a seed predator and disperser and it is a favorite prey of jaguars and pumas.
But by the following spring when the rains arrived there was a burst of flowering plants amid the nutrient-rich ash
Guo and Zheng a married couple working as postdoctoral researchers in the Noel and Chory labs respectively came up with the idea for the study while talking over dinner.
and fire became a very important part of ecosystems to free up nutrients locked up in dying and dead plants.
and knotted together like a bowl of spaghetti. In conventional silicones the chains are oriented randomly
When the material was compressed statically like squeezing a piece of Jell-o or stretching a rubber band it snapped right back into its original shape.
including close relatives of globally important food crops such as sunflower bean sweet potato and strawberry. The findings which were published today (Apr 29) in the journal Crop science are good news for plant breeders who've relied increasingly in recent years on the wild kin of domesticated crops as new sources of disease resistance drought tolerance
U s. wild relatives of the world's most important food crops--including strawberry sunflower sweet potato bean stone fruits
But it also contains relatives of forage crops like alfalfa; fiber crops such as flax and cotton;
Echinacea St john's wort and other medicinal herbs; and what Khoury calls iconic U s. crops including sugar maple and wild rice.
Andy Jarvis of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change and Food security; and Paul Struik Wageningen University.
Making a physical map is akin to breaking an egg and then assembling it back into a whole egg said Gill who is distinguished a university professor of plant pathology at K-State.
The wheat chromosome DNA is cloned in bacteria millions of bits of DNA which are sorted by robots
and drought and result in quality bread Gill said adding Most resistance genes seem to lie at the ends of chromosomes
In order to meet the food demand of nine billion people in 2050 and at the same time reduce our impact on the environment such as the use of crop protection agents
Different plant varieties make use of different growing times and different nutrients in the soil.
so that more phosphate is released. Also striking is the fact that mixed cultures are on average 40%less affected by diseases on average than single crops.
'In short in order to achieve a sustainable increase in food production we will need to deploy all the weapons in our arsenal;
It's clear that we need inorganic fertilizers to meet the increasing demands for food production
and other plants and some highly advanced analysis techniques the two researchers and archaeologists Tony Axelsson and Karl-GÃ ran Sjã gren have been able to identify parts of the diet of their Stone age ancestors.'
Another aim has been to collect animal bone material--or simply 5000 year old food remains.
There are more than a thousand papers discussing the question of what the impact is on blood pressure of decreasing the amount of salt you consume in your diet--what is called salt sensitivity.
#¢Intensive dietary intervention focused on sodium reduction#¢Weight loss program#¢Combination of weight loss and sodium-reduction programs#¢Attention control in
and less expensive evaluating weight sensitivity may be one way to identify individuals who may benefit more from weight loss as compared with other types of lifestyle interventions like cutting salt from their diet Dr. William Kostis said.
A new generation of infants were offered later both colours of food--neither tasting badly --and the adult monkeys present appeared to remember which colour they had preferred previously.
Almost every infant copied the rest of the group eating only the one preferred colour of corn.
Due to the changing climate of the past decades the egg laying dates of Parus major have become increasingly mismatched with the timing of the main food source for its chicks:
The seasonal timing of the food peak has advanced over twice as fast as that of the birds
although fewer offspring now fledge due to food shortage each of these chicks has a higher chance of survival until the next breeding season.
Out of 10 eggs laid 9 chicks are born 7 fledge and on average only one chick survives winter.
The great tits that lay eggs earlier in spring are more successful nowadays than late birds
Failing such a change ultimately the EU will become almost entirely dependent on the outside world for food
and feed and scientific progress ironically because the outside world has embraced the technology which is so unpopular in Europe realizing this is the only way to achieve sustainable agriculture said Paul Christou of the University of Lleida-Agrotecnio Center and Instituciã Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avanã§ats in Spain.
while allowing food products produced in the same ways to be imported. EU farmers are denied freedom of choice--in essence they are prevented from competing
whilst providing pasture for food production under conditions of changing climate. In areas with similar climate and soils then there is potential for reducing the likelihood of flood generation based on increased soil water storage within a river's catchment.
We usually think of improving food crops solely in terms of traits such as the yield and quality of the food itself and apart from root crops such as potatoes and carrots these are easily visible aboveground traits.
However there is increasing recognition that the health and utility of plants can be enhanced greatly by improving belowground traits such as root growth.
#Early dialogue between parents, children stems teen smokingearly substantive dialogue between parents and their grade-school age children about the ills of tobacco and alcohol use can be more powerful in shaping teen behavior
Yang's current work Demarketing teen tobacco and alcohol use: Negative peer influence and longitudinal roles of parenting
and alcohol use and that parental influences buffer the impact of other external factors such as social media and peer pressure.
and alcohol or engage in other risky behaviors. What our research determined is that parental influence is a far greater factor than those Yang said.
Over the past two decades Mato grosso has experienced both the highest rates of deforestation (mostly for pasture
and geography to large tracts of the Amazon where soybean production largely for export as animal feed is expanding rapidly.
This is in contrast to many Northern hemisphere cropland areas where fertilizers are known to add nutrients to the soil that with rainfall run off into freshwater streams
and the soil has a great capacity to absorb the nutrients. It appears to act as an enormous buffer.
so fish need more food. We don't know if warming and other changes associated with expanding cropland also increase fish food supply
--if they don't some fish may not have enough energy to survive. Neill has been working at Tanguro Ranch since 2007 with collaborators from Woods Hole Research center Brown University the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and the University of SãO Paulo.
and Brown-MBL faculty members Stephen Porder Leah Vanwey and Jack Mustard. Tanguro Ranch is the focus of a huge amount of the science on land transitions
Dubbed artificial photosynthesis this process mimics how plants convert those same ingredients to energy in the form of sugars.
We attribute the high activity of the molybdenum-soy catalyst (Mosoy) to the synergistic effect between the molybdenum-carbide phase
#High-nutrition and disease-resistant purple and yellow-fleshed potato clones obtainedthe Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and development Neiker-Tecnalia has created four new potato clones
The attractiveness and nutritional value of these types of potato make them a product highly regarded by professionals in gastronomy and by the public in general.
The three purple-flesh clones contain a large quantity of anthocyanins#a highly appreciated pigment in the preparation of high added value foods
#while the yellow flesh variety have carotenes#essential chemical components for the diet#and in greater quantities than in the usual commercial varieties.
Moreover these varieties incorporate natural antioxidant compounds which are nutritionally and visually attractive both for restaurant professionals and for end consumers#.
article April 5 for the Metallomics journal of The Royal Society of Chemistry on how to use X-ray analysis to map a path to increasing the amount of nitrogen that legumes deposit into the soil Cultivation of legumes the plant family that includes peas beans alfalfa soybeans
and peanuts is one of the main ways farmers add natural nitrogen to agricultural fields.
has important implications on food securityprecision agriculture promises to make farming more efficient and should have an important impact on the serious issue of food security according to a new study published in Significance the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association.
In an article about the study in the magazine's May issue University of Reading Professor Margaret A. Oliver BSC Phd assesses how there is potential to manage land more effectively to improve the farming economy
and crop quality and to ensure food security. Spatial variation is at the core of precision agriculture and geostatistics..
and crops to determine what the soil needs to improve crop growth in terms of crop nutrients lime and irrigation for example.
what amounts of nutrients are required in different parts of a field. Precision agriculture will reduce the amount of fertilizers
Precision agriculture will aid efforts to improve food security and also crop quality Professor Oliver notes in the article.
For Bowne the study allowed him to look beyond the obvious impact of losing agricultural fields to development--the loss of food that was produced once on the land.
or diabetes a diet that includes tart cherries might actually be better than what the doctor ordered according to new animal research from the University of Michigan Health System.
if a tart cherry-rich diet might provide similar cardiovascular benefits without the risk of heart attack or stroke.
It gives us a good preclinical model to further explore the positive stroke-related benefits of an anthocyanin-rich diet.
of which had endured poor welfare such as inappropriate diet and lack of space or shelter before arriving at a sanctuary.
which involved giving the animals an opportunity to look for food to understand the link between poor welfare
whether some goats were faster to explore specific areas that resulted in the reward of food
because they were situated between spaces known to contain food and areas without food. Mood can have a huge influence on how the brain processes information.
'and slower than the well-treated goats to explore ambiguous locations for food where the promise of reward was guaranteed not.
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