Testing Reality for Quality Assurance
Michael Pollen, Say Hello to the 100 Trillion Bacteria That Make Up Your MicrobiomeIt turns out that we are only 10 percent human: for every human cell that is intrinsic to our body, there are about 10 resident microbes — including commensals (generally harmless freeloaders) and mutualists (favor traders) and, in only a tiny number of cases, pathogens. To the extent that we are bearers of genetic information, more than 99 percent of it is microbial. And it appears increasingly likely that this “second genome,” as it is sometimes called, exerts an influence on our health as great and possibly even greater than the genes we inherit from our parents. But while your inherited genes are more or less fixed, it may be possible to reshape, even cultivate, your second genome.
Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford, suggests that we would do well to begin regarding the human body as “an elaborate vessel optimized for the growth and spread of our microbial inhabitants.” This humbling new way of thinking about the self has large implications for human and microbial health, which turn out to be inextricably linked. Disorders in our internal ecosystem — a loss of diversity, say, or a proliferation of the “wrong” kind of microbes — may predispose us to obesity and a whole range of chronic diseases, as well as some infections. “Fecal transplants,” which involve installing a healthy person’s microbiota into a sick person’s gut, have been shown to effectively treat an antibiotic-resistant intestinal pathogen named C. difficile, which kills 14,000 Americans each year. (Researchers use the word “microbiota” to refer to all the microbes in a community and “microbiome” to refer to their collective genes.) We’ve known for a few years that obese mice transplanted with the intestinal community of lean mice lose weight and vice versa. (We don’t know why.) A similar experiment was performed recently on humans by researchers in the Netherlands: when the contents of a lean donor’s microbiota were transferred to the guts of male patients with metabolic syndrome, the researchers found striking improvements in the recipients’ sensitivity to insulin, an important marker for metabolic health. Somehow, the gut microbes were influencing the patients’ metabolisms.
Our resident microbes also appear to play a critical role in training and modulating our immune system, helping it to accurately distinguish between friend and foe and not go nuts on, well, nuts and all sorts of other potential allergens. Some researchers believe that the alarming increase in autoimmune diseases in the West may owe to a disruption in the ancient relationship between our bodies and their “old friends” — the microbial symbionts with whom we coevolved.
These claims sound extravagant, and in fact many microbiome researchers are careful not to make the mistake that scientists working on the human genome did a decade or so ago, when they promised they were on the trail of cures to many diseases. We’re still waiting. Yet whether any cures emerge from the exploration of the second genome, the implications of what has already been learned — for our sense of self, for our definition of health and for our attitude toward bacteria in general — are difficult to overstate. Human health should now “be thought of as a collective property of the human-associated microbiota,” as one group of researchers recently concluded in a landmark review article on microbial ecology — that is, as a function of the community, not the individual.
Such a paradigm shift comes not a moment too soon, because as a civilization, we’ve just spent the better part of a century doing our unwitting best to wreck the human-associated microbiota with a multifronted war on bacteria and a diet notably detrimental to its well-being. Researchers now speak of an impoverished “Westernized microbiome” and ask whether the time has come to embark on a project of “restoration ecology” — not in the rain forest or on the prairie but right here at home, in the human gut.
This could change things fairly dramatically. Instead of Weight Watchers, people would ingest some tablets that insert the microbiota of skinny people into their bodies, or people with sleep disorders would get bugs from deep sleepers.
(via charnanigans)
A recent study conducted by the University of Oslo asked ten participants to attend a week-long yoga retreat in Germany. For the first two days, participants spent two hours practicing a yoga, including yogic postures, yogic breathing exercises, and meditation. For the next two days, they spent that same time period going on an hour-long nature walk and then listening to either jazz or classical music. “The researchers found that the nature walk and music-driven relaxation changed the expression of 38 genes in these circulating immune cells. In comparison, the yoga produced changes in 111.”
Yoga really is a superpower.
Re blogged for Amanda who will be puzzled that I am reblogging something so obvious.
The Spotted Lakes of British Columbia
The lake appears to be a normal one during fall, winter, and a small portion of spring; but during the summer, most of the lake becomes evaporated. Dozens upon dozens of crater-like mineral deposits rest at the bottom of the lake and become visible during the warm weather. The mineral deposits span about 25 feet on average and contain many different concentrations of magnesium sulfate, and calcium/sodium phosphates, which gives them a distinct yellow, orange, green, or blue color.
(via odditiesoflife)
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Secret Life of Michio Kaku
Every childhood is made up of roadblocks and opportunities. And interviewing our “Secret Life” subjects, we hear a lot about both. But we’d never heard a story quite like the one Michio Kaku told us:
“My parents were born in California. However, during World War II 100,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated in large relocation camps. So my parents never had a chance. Their property was confiscated. They lived behind barbed wires and machine guns from 1942 to 1946. And I was born afterwards, when my parents were dirt poor.”
Somehow, after the war, and after their release from the internment camps, Michio’s parents worked to rebuild their lives. They started out with nothing, but put everything they did have into creating a better life for their children. And when Michio began to show that he was more than a little prodigious as a teen scientist, they went along. They went along, even with limited resources and with virtually no idea of what was behind (or could be the consequences) of Michio’s sometimes more-than-a-little-risky boyhood experiments:
“So one day I went up to my mom and I said, ‘Mom, can I have permission to build a 2.3-million electron-volt atom smasher—a betatron—in the garage?’ And my mom stared at me, and she said, ‘Sure. Why not? And don’t forget to take out the garbage.’ So, I went out and took out the garbage. And then I went to Westinghouse. I got 400 pounds of transformer steel, 22 miles of copper wire, and built a 2.3-million electron-volt betatron in the garage. The wire was so heavy, I put the wire on the goal post [of the nearby high school football field] and I gave it to my mother. She ran with this strand of wire to the 50-yard line. My father grabbed it, ran to the goalpost and we wound 22 miles of copper wire on the football field. Well, the magnetic field was so powerful—about 20,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field. If you were to walk by my atom smasher, it would pull the fillings out of your teeth—that’s how powerful the magnet was going to be.”
When Michio actually plugged in his atom smasher, it did, of course, blow out every fuse in his house and likely every fuse for miles around—yet another kid scientist who made the lights go out and the authorities shake their fists (while grudgingly admitting that the kid was pretty smart).
But that wasn’t my big takeaway from Michio’s story.
What grabbed me was that his parents—uneducated about science, returning to the world after years of imprisonment “behind barbed wire and machine guns”—were more than willing to wrap 22 miles of a different kind of wire around the goalposts of a football field… all because they loved their son, had faith in him and his ideas, and wanted him to become the person he was clearly meant to be.
Seems like it all paid off.
Source: PBS.org
Credit: Tom Miller](http://24.media.tumblr.com/620ff014759cc4ae3715f00aa73075c3/tumblr_mgtgpnN0if1rnq3cto1_r4_500.jpg)
Secret Life of Michio Kaku
Every childhood is made up of roadblocks and opportunities. And interviewing our “Secret Life” subjects, we hear a lot about both. But we’d never heard a story quite like the one Michio Kaku told us:
“My parents were born in California. However, during World War II 100,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated in large relocation camps. So my parents never had a chance. Their property was confiscated. They lived behind barbed wires and machine guns from 1942 to 1946. And I was born afterwards, when my parents were dirt poor.”
Somehow, after the war, and after their release from the internment camps, Michio’s parents worked to rebuild their lives. They started out with nothing, but put everything they did have into creating a better life for their children. And when Michio began to show that he was more than a little prodigious as a teen scientist, they went along. They went along, even with limited resources and with virtually no idea of what was behind (or could be the consequences) of Michio’s sometimes more-than-a-little-risky boyhood experiments:
“So one day I went up to my mom and I said, ‘Mom, can I have permission to build a 2.3-million electron-volt atom smasher—a betatron—in the garage?’ And my mom stared at me, and she said, ‘Sure. Why not? And don’t forget to take out the garbage.’ So, I went out and took out the garbage. And then I went to Westinghouse. I got 400 pounds of transformer steel, 22 miles of copper wire, and built a 2.3-million electron-volt betatron in the garage. The wire was so heavy, I put the wire on the goal post [of the nearby high school football field] and I gave it to my mother. She ran with this strand of wire to the 50-yard line. My father grabbed it, ran to the goalpost and we wound 22 miles of copper wire on the football field. Well, the magnetic field was so powerful—about 20,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field. If you were to walk by my atom smasher, it would pull the fillings out of your teeth—that’s how powerful the magnet was going to be.”
When Michio actually plugged in his atom smasher, it did, of course, blow out every fuse in his house and likely every fuse for miles around—yet another kid scientist who made the lights go out and the authorities shake their fists (while grudgingly admitting that the kid was pretty smart).
But that wasn’t my big takeaway from Michio’s story.
What grabbed me was that his parents—uneducated about science, returning to the world after years of imprisonment “behind barbed wire and machine guns”—were more than willing to wrap 22 miles of a different kind of wire around the goalposts of a football field… all because they loved their son, had faith in him and his ideas, and wanted him to become the person he was clearly meant to be.
Seems like it all paid off.
Source: PBS.org
Credit: Tom Miller
(via crookedindifference)
Clouds in the shape of a DNA helix? Cool! And in case you’re wondering, yes, it’s turning in the correct right-handed direction :)
(via thesciencellama)
(via warmregardscara)
What The Night Sky Will Look Like Over the Next 7 Billion Years
Here’s a little-known fact: If our eyes were sensitive enough, the Andromeda galaxy would be wider than the Moon in the night sky.
Another little-known fact: That same Andromeda galaxy, the Milky Way’s closest neighbor, is on a collision course with our spiral home. Starting in 3.5 billion years or so, our galaxies will smack into each other. Galaxies are mostly empty space, so it won’t be as catastrophic as you might imagine, but it will certainly change the organization of the stars.
This video is what the night sky may look like as Andromeda gets closer, since none of us will be around to see it. Also, be sure to check out this timeline of the far future.
(via PetaPixel)
(via warmregardscara)
No Star Left Behind
Contrary to expectations, the brightest supernova in recorded history left no star in its wake, say astronomers who have searched the celestial wreckage (shown). In 1006, observers watched a star explode in the constellation Lupus that shone about a dozen times more brilliantly than Venus ever does. The explosion was a Type Ia supernova, the most luminous variety, which occurred when a small, dense star known as a white dwarf blew up about 7000 light-years from Earth. Such a supernova is supposed to result when a larger companion star dumps material onto the white dwarf, triggering a runaway nuclear reaction that annihilates the small star. However, as astronomers will report in The Astrophysical Journal, a thorough search for the companion, which should have survived the explosion, has turned up nothing. This finding dovetails with a similar nondetection in a nearby galaxy and suggests the explosion arose instead when two white dwarfs that were in orbit around each other merged and blew up—hinting that more Type Ia supernovae may stem from double white dwarfs than astronomers had thought.
(via warmregardscara)
The Woven Brain
To the unaided eye, the most striking feature of the human brain is its squiggly pattern of bumps and grooves. But within those curves is a latticework of nerve fibers that cross each other at roughly right angles (above), according to a study published in tomorrow’s issue of Science. The researchers used a recently-developed method called diffusion spectrum imaging to infer the position of nerve fibers in the living human brain from the way water flows through and around them. These scans revealed an orderly weave of fibers—a much simpler organization than many scientists would have suspected. Scans in four monkey species found a similar pattern. The researchers suggest that this grid-like organization may be advantageous during brain development, providing the equivalent of highway lane markers to help growing nerve fibers find their way to the appropriate destination.
(via warmregardscara)
Acoustic Levitation
Using sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing pharmaceutical drugs and drying them in mid-air. Why do this? This is useful because most of the drugs on the market are either amorphous or crystalline and the crystalline form doesn’t get absorbed by the body. So levitating the solution allows the drug to be made into an amorphous state (by evaporation) because if it were to touch any surface it would simply crystallize. They call this “containerless processing”.
The frequencies used are just above the audible range at about 22 kilohertz and when the two speakers are aligned they create two sets of sound waves, perfectly interfering with each other creating a phenomenon known as a standing wave. This allows the objects to levitate in areas within the waves known as nodes as the acoustic pressure is enough to cancel the force of gravity.
That’s amazing. :O
(via charnanigans)
I may have reblogged this before. I think it’s worth reblogging again.
Not just cat pee.
(via charnanigans)
