Canadian Minister of Health, Genitte Petitpas Taylor, announced one year ago that Canada would be banning the addition of trans fats in food, and that ban came in effect today. Officials predicted the ban is going to prevent 12000 deaths from heart disease over the next 20 years.
Heart disease is no laughing matter. According to the Canadian Ministry of Health, “About 1 in 12 (or 2.4 million) Canadian adults age 20 and over live with diagnosed heart disease” and “Every hour, about 12 Canadian adults age 20 and over with diagnosed heart disease die”. So, what can we do to beat heart disease? Exercising, drinking and smoking in moderation, and eating a healthy diet are what any doctor will suggest. When it comes to eating a healthy diet, trans fats are public enemy number 1, but why is that?
Trans fats contain cholesterol that is carried in the body by proteins. The most common are low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL). These two lipoproteins bind to cholesterol to make it soluble in water so that it can move around our body. Unfortunately, LDL is also responsible for the plaques in our heart and arteries that contribute to heart disease. Knowing this, it’s a no-brainer to reduce the amount of LDL cholesterol we eat. Trans fats have a high proportion of LDL to HDL cholesterol relative to other fats, so avoiding them is the obvious choice. If you’re worried that your favourite treats will soon be off the shelf, there’s no need to worry.
Protecting people is part of a government’s job, and the Canadian government should have taken action to protect Canadians from this health threat years ago. Canada has finally joined a global initiative to reduce trans fats in food, alongside the United States of America and the European Union. While our heel-dragging isn’t great for our health, we can at least rest easy knowing that food manufacturers in the USA and the EU have already had time to remove trans fats from their products, so we can keep buying them in Canada without interruption. While some alternatives to trans fats are a little more expensive, we can at least pay with our wallets rather than our health. I’ll raise a doughnut to that.
No evidence proves that Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) can treat individuals with cancer and diabetes alone. I wouldn’t believe the research even if there was evidence. As someone who rarely believes that Chinese medicine helps,I was surprised to learn that there are studies proving that herbal medicine therapy in fact increases the survival rates of patients when integrated with current treatments.
Chinese Medicine Shop by Bomb Bao. Flikr Image.
In a 2014 study led by Dr. Lee, roughly 700 individuals diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer participated between 2001-2010. Significant results over the 10-year period proved that supplementary TCM therapy helped to improve the survival rate of as much as 12% in breast cancer patients.
Chinese herbal medicines such as Pu Gong Ying and Ban Zhi Lian were prescribed as supplements to Taxane, a class of drugs used for breast cancer treatment. These herbs were experimentally found to prevent uncontrolled cell growth and increase frequencies of tumour cell-mediated apoptosis that would otherwise lead to tumour formation and cancer.
Dr. Lee’s study also indicated that among the TCMs used, some assisted to diminish side-effects from breast cancer treatments.
Another study in 2016 investigated if Chinese medicine therapy reduced complications caused by Type II diabetes. The researchers found that although patients who took antidiabetic medicines such as metformin and insulin did not lower their dosage intakes after introducing TCM treatments, their risk of vascular side-effects greatly improved. But just how great?
Insulin by 2C2KPhotography. Flikr Image.
An astonishing 33% decrease in risk of stroke was observed in Type II diabetic individuals who regularly used Chinese medicinal herbs. The most common herbs prescribed to Type II diabetic individuals were danshen and da huang during the entire 10-year study, conducted between 2000 and 2011.
Dan shen, also known as red sage, is extensively popular in Asian countries such as Taiwan as a traditional Chinese herb. Not only is it known to reduce risks of hypertension, a long-term condition of high blood pressure, but it also promotes better blood flow. Together, this significantly helps in decreasing the chances of stroke in diabetic individuals.
So red sage won’t help us fight diabetes, but it certainly helps to prevent cardiovascular diseases that are associated with it. For a perfectly healthy individual, traditional Chinese medicine is probably a great supplement to take – that is, if you’re willing to tolerate the medicine’s bitter taste. I know I couldn’t as a child, but that was at least 10 years ago.
Cancer is probably the biggest enemy of human beings. It is a fatal disease which causes death of millions of people. Effective therapies to cancer is so invaluable and demanding that it could save lives. However, high prices of cancer drugs impede the process of making cancer therapies affordable to patients, worsening the situation of health care. Studies showed that the average price of cancer drugs in the United States rocketed from $5000 to over $100,000 by 2012.Why are cancer drugs so expensive that most families cannot even afford it?
As oncologists, Drs. Hagop Kantarjian and S. Vincent Rajkumar from University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center felt obliged to advocate for affordable cancer drugs. They discussed reasons for these high prices and potential solutions in an article published on Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2015. They refuted four arguments for high prices from pharmaceutical companies: the enormous effort of research and drug development, the benefits to patients, the market forces and discouragement of innovations by controlling prices.
The authors argued that the main attributors to high cancer drug prices were the established oligopolies of pharmaceutical companies and their prevention from price negotiations. Pharmaceutical companies not only discouraged competition with each other, but tried to prevent cancer treatments entering federal medical care programs in the U.S. Furthermore, prohibition of imported cancer drugs from foreign countries made the matter worse. As a result, cancer drug prices in the U.S. outweighed any region in the world.
Apart from discussing the triggers of high prices, the authors also suggested ways to control the ridiculous increase in cancer drug prices. Solving the problem of monopolies and allowing Medicare to negotiate with the prices would be the most effective solutions. In addition, allowing U.S. Food and Drugs Administration to recommend a target price, facilitate imports of drugs from abroad would also alleviate the pressure of rocketing prices.
Cancer drugs can save lives. Pharmaceutical companies should not dictate the prices, but on the other hand, help reduce the prices, casting the light of hope inside the heart of desperate patients.
Researchers in Massachusetts Institute of technology have developed an automated machine that can perform several chemical reactions in a short time to determine the most efficient route for synthesizing complex organic molecules such as various drugs and artificially synthesized natural products such as proteins and vitamins.
Researchers in the field of organic synthesis, spend weeks or months trying to come up with a synthetic route for a new complex organic molecule such as a new drug. These routes often are not efficient, so they spend even more time, trying to optimize the route so that the target molecule can be synthesized with high yields in large scales in industry. This new system can test and optimize a new synthetic route in about a day.
Synthesis of useful but complex organic molecules is a time-consuming process. Image from Pixabay
According to Timothy F. Jamison, head of MIT’s Department of Chemistry, in an interview with MIT News“our goal was to create an easy to use system that would allow scientist to come up with the best conditions for making their molecules of interest”. This would allow chemists to have more time to come up with new ideas that can be easily and efficiently tested.
This machine uses a continuous flow systemco-designed by Jamison a few years ago. In this system, chemical reagents flow through a series of tubes and at different points, new chemicals are added to the reaction. So, the machine performs a multi-step synthetic process continuously without the need to manually transfer the products of a reaction to be used as the starting materials of the next reaction.
So, the chemist comes up with a new synthetic route for a desired molecule and programs the machine with the reaction conditions. Then the machine uses an optimization program to explore different conditions and determines the reaction conditions that result in the highest yield.
This new system can test and improve a synthetic route for a complex organic molecule like a pharmaceutical in a day. Image from shutterstock
In my opinion, innovations like this can easily and rapidly improve synthetic organic chemistry so many useful natural organic molecules can be efficiently synthetized in industry. This means more reasonable prices for many drugs and important supplements.
The researchers have patented this new technology and published the results of the research as a journal article in Science.
The freshwater crisis has been a serious global problem for years. There is 70 percent of the world covered by water while there’s only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. What if I tell you now there is a way we can transform from toxic water with heavy metal ion into safe drinking water?
In 2018 September 21, researchers in UNSW and RMIT funded by The ARC Centre for Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET) published an efficient and revolutionary method to transform water with heavy metal ion into drinking water by filtering the water through aluminum oxide nano-filters. It indicates that the water source recycle will be improved further with the massive production of this portable and low-cost filter paper.
The research shows that the liquid metal-based filter paper can excellently separate the oil and heavy metal ions(mainly lead ion), which highly improved water source recycle system. The lead ion has a strong affinity to the aluminum oxide surface while the water doesn’t react with it. Thus, safe drinking water is obtained after the filtration.
The method of making this aluminum oxide nano-filters are quite simple and more importantly, cheap. First thin sheets and nanofibers of boehmite while annealing. The researchers then add of aluminum into gallium alloy in room temperature, then they expose the melt to liquid water or water vapor and aluminum oxide will be synthesized on the alloy’s surface.
Fortunately, The researchers decided to release their study to the public, which means that people all over the world are able to produce the same aluminum oxide nano-filters free and increase the quality of fresh water worldwide.
The researcher also indicates that more research about using liquid metal as the base material is needed in the future.
Vegetarian diets are not only healthy for people, but for the planet also! M. Sanjayan, CEO of Conservation International, among various scientist’s state that a reduction of meat consumption in our diets have a significant impact on global warming, since about 25% of climate change is attributed to food and the choices we make, according to the UN IPCC fifth assessment report, 2014.
Climate change raises concerns internationally, it is the crisis of the 21st century that could lead to disastrous consequences in the future. Therefore, international community constantly collaborates to mitigate green house gas emissions (GHG emissions), These are gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) that their presence essentially causes global warming.
Which gases are green house gasses and what does their chemical structure look like. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
A brief explanation of how green house gasses affect global warming. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
The last important agreement was the Paris accords in November of 2016, where government officials stated to reduce 55% of GHG emissions. Climate change is an overwhelming issue and people might think that to solve this problem, the choice remains within government officials and multinational companies. But there is something we can do to tackle climate change.
Scientists like Ben Houlton from UC Davis says that people’s dietary choices, have an impact on climate change, specifically when consuming meat. Reducing meat consumption or switching from red meats, like beef and pork, to poultry and fish are great ways to reduce GHG emissions and help save the planet.
Say for example, that juicy serving of beef that you crave at a good summer barbecue, that steak alone takes on average 330g of CO2 to produce. That is the same emission a car would give off by driving for 3 miles. Deciding to switch that serving of beef for chicken reduces carbon emissions 6-fold, because chicken meat produces 52g of CO2 average. Switching for a fish or vegetable serving instead, reduces the carbon impact substantially.
According to the UN FAO, 2013 and UN IPCC, 2014, livestock and transportation contribute equally to climate change by producing equal GHG emissions. This is because livestock such as cows, pigs, lamb and chickens etc. produce significant amounts of methane (CH4).
Animals give off methane through their excrement and flatulence, animals in general are gassy! Why do animals produce methane? Because it results from chemical reactions when breaking down food, even humans produce methane. The issue with methane is, that it is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide according to M. Sanjayan.
relative emissions of CO2 in livestock. Cattle are the main contributor to the sector’s emissions with about 5.0 gigatonnes CO2-eq, which represents about 62 percent of sector’s emissions. -Courtesy of FAO
There are several other indirect factors harming the planet, that are caused by meat consumption. For example, livestock agriculture promotes deforestation, because it takes space to raise livestock, leading to land clearance. This means double trouble, on one hand we increase GHG emissions by raising more animals, and on the other we cut down trees that help fight global warming by converting CO2 to oxygen by photosynthesis.
The Consequences of going entirely vegetarian. (Blog 3C)
However, meat reduction doesn’t seem to benefit Canada and could be a threat to the life style of many full-time hard-working Canadians. In Context, Canada is one of the strongest exporters of red meat in the world.In 2017 the beef cattle industry contributed $17.2 billion to Canadian GDP, providing an amazing economic contribution.
Also, the dairy sector sustains 215,000 full-time equivalent jobs in rural communities and contributes to $18.9B to Canada’s GDP. It is the top 2 agricultural commodities in 7 out of the 10 provinces. Therefore livestock is an important industry for the country!
Livestock in Canada is an ideal resource to exploit, because much of Canada’s land is not suitable for crops due to the terrain, soil nutrients and weather. Only 7.3% of the country’s total land is agricultural. Therefore, livestock is the best way to make use of the land that can’t afford any vegetable products. It raises the question, what happens to the farmers since they cannot transition to growing vegetables with the same land? Do they lose their jobs without a solution?
Since losing an important economic contributor would decrease government economic resources, other government funded programs like health care, retirement, research and many more would suffer. Lowering the quality of life then becomes a nation-wide problem.
Personally, I believe we could all benefit from reducing our meat consumption. Our current food systems could benefit by diversifying from monoculture and heavy livestock tendencies. However, it is undeniable that our lives in Canada are significantly dependent on the livestock industry in several ways. Canada is a resource-based country and much of our wealth unfortunately comes from exploiting resources. Balance always seems to be key, not everyone should become vegan at once, but also, don’t have a cow! Be mindful with what you eat.
For a detailed summary and more information check out this video made with M. Sanjayan!
Creatures’ brains relax and refresh after yawning, and they will better to continue work. However, have you ever notice that you start to yawn after the person next to you yawned even if you don’t feel tired? Or after you yawn, the person next to you start to yawn. Is yawning contagious? Do the sandmen fly to one person to let them yawn and then fly to another one? The answer is no, sandmen are not real.
A yawning cat — Credit to the Author
Instead, contagious yawning is natural, even animals have contagious yawning. One research team conducted an experiment which volunteers were asked to yawn after watching a yawning video. The research indicated that the brain’s primary motor cortex automatically triggers the relax. This reaction can cause creatures to yawn.
The other word to explain this behavior is empathy. Empathy can be defined as the ability to sense others’ emotion or feeling. One person can understand and feel another’s emotion when he/she yawns. Afterward, that person who sensed another’s emotion starts to imitate him/she to feel his/her feeling. Yawning has the same function, this is why when you observe a person yawn, you will start to yawn.
Contagious around different animals — image from baillement.com
However, contagious yawning does not always happen. A science writer Sam Kean indicated that human can pick up contagious yawning after the age of 4 to 5, whereas the small kids cannot have that behavior. Also, the chance of having someone yawn back might higher if you yawn in front of your family or relatives.
Another research shows contagious yawning might exist in brain substrates that related to self-recognition and mental state. These brain substrates control contagious yawning. In that research, the researchers observed subjects’ behavior while they watch videos about yawning and find out that most of the normal volunteers started to yawn involuntary. However, most of the schizophrenic volunteers did not. Therefore, schizophrenic patients who lack recognition ability and the mental state attribution to others show little or no contagious yawning.
Although some of the research can figure out the reason for contagious yawning, it remains an unexplained mystery. Contagious yawning may also relative to temperature and further research should be done to solve the problem.
Since antiquity, biological warfare decimated the opposition. The Assyrians developedfungus that poisoned enemy forces while the Mongols threw fallen soldiers over city walls to spread disease. However, present day treaties and protocols have banned biological weaponry for military use.
Unfortunately, the modern age introduced a new threat: Bioterrorism.
Security agencies around the world struggle to detect biochemical agents. Terrorists can easily create anthrax and smallpox to inflict mass hysteria in enclosed areas such as airports or schools.
Anthrax acts as a potent nerve agent (destroys the body’s nervous system), while smallpox can infect millions of people, killing 30% of those afflicted. Thus, governments have responded by creating defence organizations tasked with combating this emerging threat.
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.” – Nietzsche
To me, this quote best describes the proper way of fighting back. I believe using destructive weaponry to annihilate terrorists does not make us any better than them. A fine line must exist, that separates us from becoming the very monsters, we fear ourselves.
So far, military research has focused more on prevention over elimination of the enemy. Particularly, in the field of spectroscopy which studies how light interacts with physical objects.
A study done in 2011 by researchers from the Defense Science & Technology Laboratory United Kingdom developed PD-SORS (Point Detection – Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy), a new technique that can detect traces of urine hidden in containers from distances of up to 20 cm away. Very similar to the Tricorder from Star Trek (a portable scanning sensor).
SORS works like this: a laser beam fires from a box and hits an object (encased by a barrier) which then scatters around its container before returning back to the box for analysis. A variety of barriers were tested: ranging from paper envelopes, jiffy bags and complex chemical compounds. To great effect, the detector picked up urine traces in all different types of containers!
SORS serves a crucial role in defence because traditional Raman spectroscopy excels in transparent and open-air settings. However, most threats hide from the public eye. Terrorists will place dirty bombs in suitcases, jackets and even coffee cups!
The ability to detect sub-surface threats proves invaluable in thwarting potential terrorist attacks. This practical application will allow airport security to improve their efficiency and accuracy when screening for potential threats at checkpoints.
Fighting headstrong may have worked in ancient times, but bioterrorism will require a different strategy. The key lies in prevention, where the greatest victory requires no battle.
I grew up on a farm in land-locked Alberta. Apart from a couple of family vacations, the most experience I had with the ocean was watching fields of wheat break into waves on a correctly windy day. I have always been a bit hesitant when it comes to the Great Blue Sea. Its vastness and wide variety of occupants intimidate me. However, Vancouver’s close proximity to the Pacific has altered my mindset. Knowledge is power, and if I am able to understand bits of the ocean’s makeup, I will be less wary.
Link to Video of a Wheat Field in the Wind on Youtube
Researchers have published a paper which links humans and octopi through a common gene involved in social interaction that has been preserved independently in each lineage for over 500 million years. Their approach? A little trippy.
Chemical Structure of MDMA. Image courtesy of Erin Finnerty
Scientists from John Hopkins University and Josephine Bay Paul Center gave Octopus bimaculoides MDMA, the party drug also known as ecstasy, in an attempt to see its effects on social interaction. It is known that MDMA encourages prosocial behaviour in humans and mice, but invertebrates were never considered. Induced O. bimaculoides spend a significantly increased amount of time socially interacting with other octopi than when sober.
Chemical Structure of MDMA. Image courtesy of Erin FinnertyOctopuses were given the option to interact with an inanimate object, a social object (male or female octopus), or stay in the empty central area of a three-chambered tank. Untreated O. bimaculoides spend more time with the novel object than in the other tanks. When the social object is a female, subjects spend a larger amount of time in the social chamber than when the social object is a male. This shows a significant preference for female interaction.
These creatures are asocial and solitary, naturally interacting with others only for ecologically favourable purposes such as mating. MDMA increases serotonin levels in the body. Serotonin helps promote social interaction and therefore, positively influences sociality.
When soaked in an MDMA bath, O. bimaculoides prefers to spend time with male social objects than with the novel object. Their interactions are much more exploratory, and subjects use their entire body for extensive surface contact when under the influence. Effective MDMA doses were analogous with those of humans and rodents.
At the same time, the genome of O. bimaculoides was successfully sequenced to find the gene SLC6A4. This gene is known in humans to be involved with serotonin neurotransmission and transportation. O. bimaculoides carries the gene and the ability to be social, but the neural mechanisms are suppressed until ecologically necessary.
Photo of O. bimaculoides at Santa Monica Pier Aquarium in 2006. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Selan
Dr. Gül Dölen, the lead investigator, summarizes the research: “What our studies suggest is that certain brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters, that send signals between neurons required for these social behaviors are evolutionarily conserved.” She also suggests that more research need to be done in exploring the homology of these lineages as these results are preliminary.
I find it very comforting to know that there is a scientific correlation between humans and octopi. This does not mean you could convince me to go scuba diving tomorrow, but using my interest in genetics and ecology is an effective tactic!
If you have ever suffered from an upset stomach, your doctor might have prescribed you an antibiotic to help you feel better. But repeatedly using antibiotics can make us more susceptible to severe forms of disease that antibiotics cannot treat. One such disease is caused by the bacterium Clostridium difficile and is characterized by symptoms ranging from mild diarrhea to rupturing of the bowel in extreme cases. Luckily, the future for treating such conditions doesn’t seem to be a complete stink as scientists believe we might be able to use our own poop to combat diseases of the gut.
Clostridium difficile bacteria are tiny inhabitants of your gut wall. They are about a million times smaller than a baseball bat and can only be seen with a microscope. (Image Source)
Your own poop? Yes. Call it a trans-poo-sion to appear cool and hip like today’s millennials.
A study published in March 2015, by scientists from Italian universities, has shown that fecal transplants are more effective in treating diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile than one of humankind’s most powerful antibiotics. The findings come at an important time when newly emerging strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a huge risk for human health and health-related government expenditure.
The problem with overusing antibiotics is that they negatively impact the community of micro-organisms living in your gut, collectively known as the microbiome. The microbiome is important in digesting our food, but is also part of the disease-fighting immune system. Common thought has made us believe that removing bugs from our bodies can help us improve our health, but removing some of these competitors may allow for more dangerous strains of bacteria such as C. difficile to flourish.
There are more than 10 times as many microbes inside and on our bodies than there are human cells – The gut microbe community is one of the most complex. (Image Source)
Fecal transplants could be used to restore a damaged microbiome and allow the body to fight off an infection. While I was initially skeptical about the idea, it now seems reasonable – If a damaged microbiome promotes disease, then why not replace the microbiome itself? According to the scientists, infusing a patient with feces from a healthy donor can help replenish useful communities of microorganisms that may have previously been wiped out by an antibiotic.
In their study, the scientists administered either a treatment of vancomycin, a powerful antibiotic, or a fecal transplant to 39 patients suffering from recurring C. difficile infections. The results were astounding: a whopping 90% of patients treated by fecal transplants recovered from the infection, compared to only 26% of the patients who received an antibiotic.
The promise of fecal transplants for treating gut diseases has had far-reaching effects, with companies investigating ways of making the treatment more accessible. OpenBiome, a non-profit company based in Boston, currently freezes poop samples to a low enough temperature to be packed into ready-to-take capsules. However unconventional, I believe that re-defining traditional pharmaceuticals is important in the odyssey of treating disease – As disease-causing organisms become smarter and more powerful, our treatments need to become more sustainable asides from being just effective.
In opposition, skeptics argue that the long-term safety issues of using feces to treat disease are still unknown. But with all new treatments comes a probation period to unravel some of its problems. At present, the case for poop transplants seems more substantiated than the case against.
In this spirit, it might be a good idea to start thinking about saving your poop for a rainy day.
