Folic Acid Contributing to Healthy Prenatal Development

Posted on October 22, 2012 by | 2 comments

It can sometimes be a pain ,or easy to forget to take our vitamins. It is however very important to take vitamins in capsule form if we are not getting all the essential ones in our diet. This is especially true to all the women who are planning on having a baby, or are involved in activities which may result in becoming pregnant. Folic acid is a vitamin which is very important to consume in order to ensure healthy development of the unborn child.

What is folic acid exactly? It is a B vitamin which is produced by bacteria. A vitamin is a substance which is vital to the healthy functioning of the body but cannot be created in sufficient amounts by the body, or perhaps by the body at all. Folic acid is a vitamin which must be ingested, either through diet or through capsule. Dark coloured vegetables such as spinach and broccoli, also beans and lentils are example of foods which are rich in folic acid.

This is a short video explaining some of the benefits of folic acid, and what foods we can eat to incorporate it in our diets:
Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Baby: Folic Acid for Women

Okay, so now your plate is full of greens and beans… what good is this doing for the future child exactly? Folic acid contributes to development of the spine, skull and brain, which are self-explicably important to an individual’s daily function. In order to gain the maximum benefits of folic acid during pregnancy, it is a good idea to start incorporating it in the diet three months prior to the baby being conceived, and also the following three months.

What are some of the risks of becoming pregnant with a diet deficient in folic acid? As mentioned in the previous paragraph, folic acid is crucial to the development of the spine, skull and brain, so these areas specifically will suffer the consequences. Spina bifida, a condition where the spinal column doesn’t protect the spinal cord, and anencephaly, a condition where the brain does not develop, are two of the possible outcomes of a baby developing in a folic acid deficient environment.

Foods which are rich of folic acid

http://www.folicacid.ca/sites/default/files/image/greens.png

These are just a few of the benefits of consuming folic acid in our diets. There are many benefits which this vitamin provides, not related to a baby’s development. Folic acid is also linked to helping to maintain a healthy heart, and cancer prevention, among other things. So next time you hear someone bad mouthing broccoli, you can enlighten them with all the heroic qualities which these and other folic acid dense foods possess.

Chelsea Forbes

Cited Links:

http://womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/folic-acid.cfm

http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/fa-af/index-eng.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folic_acid

Video from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg2xqK0Zy5c

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Hearing Loss and Earphones

Posted on October 22, 2012 by | 3 comments

The IPod and MP3 player revolutionized the way we listen to music. It is possible to carry thousands of high quality songs in a super portable device. Everywhere you look, whether it is at a gym, at a school campus, in a library, or even on the street, you are bound to see numerous people with their earphones in their ears, listening to their music. Through observation, you will notice many people spend hours listening to music with the music so loud that others are able to hear the music clearly around them. People that are listening to their music loud and for prolonged periods of times are damaging their hearing. In order to understand how loud music from earphones damages hearing one must first understand how hearing works in the first place.

How does hearing work?

Diagram of the structure of ear. Shows external, middle and inner ear. Source: Temporal Bone and Ear Anatomy – Kevin Kavanagh MD

First sounds are picked up by the external ear. The sound wave pitches are then increased as the sound enters the ear canal. Next, the sound enters into the middle ear. The middle ear contains an important delicate bone structure called the ossicles. The function of the ossicles is to intensify the sound vibrations. Once the ossicles has done its job, the sound waves are moved into the inner ear. Tiny hair cells are then activated and are set in motion by the movement of fluid. These tinyhairs convert the vibrations into impulses. The impulses are then sent down the auditory nerve and the brain processes the sounds.

How do headphones harm your ear? 

The main location in the ear that hearing loss occurs is the inner ear. The high energy sound waves produced by loud music in earphones or prolonged earphone use, overstimulate the fluid, causing an over stimulation in the hair cells, which results in many of these cells to die. When these hair cells die,  certain frequencies of sound are no longer heard and processed by the brain. This is called hearing loss.

So how can you protect your ears?

If you regularly use your IPod and want to prevent hearing loss here these are the best preventative measures:

  • The most obvious is to control the volume of the device, don’t go over 60% of the maximum volume.
  • Use noise cancelling headphones so you don’t adjust the volume louder just because you are hearing background noise
  • Finally, limit the use of your IPod to only one hour a day, as this the time limit stated by researchers as the optimal time for use, considering the fact that your ears are exposed to  other high sound level factors such as traffic every day.

In the NBC news report below, Dr. Kourosh Parham, a ear specialist, describes preventative techniques in order to help people avoid hearing loss from earphones:

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-Mandip Parmar

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I am deadly, see me flash!

Posted on October 22, 2012 by | 4 comments

Found hiding under rocks and in shells along beaches from Japan to Australia, the blue ringed octopus, Hapalochlaena lunulata, is one of the most beautiful creatures in the waters; but, it’s appearance can be deceiving as it is also one of the most deadly octopuses in the world.

Photo from CirclesOfLight via Flickr

These small octopuses are only the size of a golf ball but their bite contains a strong neurotoxin with the ability to be fatal to an adult human. When resting, they appear yellow in colour with brown spots; however, when provoked, they exhibit about 60 bright blue rings that cover their body.

Most octopuses utilize three structures when demonstrating colour change of their skin: chromatophores, iridophores and leucophores. Chromatophores are sacs in the skin, filled with pigment and controlled by the surrounding muscles. Upon contraction or relaxation, the sacs shrink or expand to change the look of the pigment. Iridophores are iridescent sheets located beneath chromatophores that are controlled by the shift of proteins and cytoplasm. This results in the sheets reflecting different wavelengths of light or UV rays to change the sheet’s appearance. Lastly, residing under iridophores, leucophores reflect white light to give contrast to the other colours from the chromatophores and iridophores.

Photo from Steve Childs via Flickr

Recently, researchers have found that this typical method of visual display is not how the blue ringed octopus warns its prey. The rings on this small octopus are made of iridophores with no chromatophores above them; instead, the chromatophores were located beneath and surrounding the rings. To give its warning, the octopus relaxes the muscles above its rings and contracts the ones surrounding it, exposing the iridescent blue of the iridophores and dark pigments of the chromatophores. With the iridophores on clear display and chromatophores surrounding, the blue ringed octopus is able to employ an impressive and vivid warning signal as seen below:

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As impressive as this display is, it is also very effective. The blue-green section of the visible spectrum is seen by most of the predators interested in eating these octopuses and it is vivid in underwater light. The speed at which the display is activated combined with the bright colour proves beneficial for both predator and prey as the predator is warned before it attacks the deadly octopus and the octopus survives to live another day.

The defensive nature of this small creature just goes to show that appearances can be deceiving – even the most beautiful of creatures can be deadly.

 – Karly Stillwell

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Posted in Biological Sciences

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Microbes with Arsenic DNA Backbones: Fact or Science Fiction?

Posted on October 20, 2012 by | 2 comments

In December of 2010, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) took the scientific world by storm with a press release stating that a news conference would be held to “discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”. At the press conference, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon claimed to have found a microbe that was able to incorporate arsenic as a substitute for phosphate in the DNA backbone. This conclusion was reached since the microbe managed to grow even in conditions with high arsenic concentrations and low phosphate concentrations. This microbe, strain GFAJ-1 of the Halomonadaceae, was isolated from Mono Lake, California, a lake known for its toxicity in the form of extremely high concentrations of arsenic.

Picture of GFAJ-1: (Creative Commons License: image by Jodi Switzer Blum)

Wolfe-Simon’s reasoning was that because arsenic is directly below phosphate in the periodic table, it has a similar chemical reactivity which allows it to be substituted for phosphate in the DNA backbone. According to NASA, the implication of this research is that the long-held assumption that all life on earth, from the tiniest microbe to large mammals, depends on six essential elements, one being phosphorus, may be wrong.

NASA sensationalized the implications of Wolfe-Simon’s research; it was claimed that the exploration for alien life that previously only included searching for the six essential elements, would have to be modified to include arsenic. A whole new branch of previously unexplored life forms could exist.

 However, the scientific community was not as receptive as the public to Wolfe-Simon’s work. Shortly after the online publication of Wolfe-Simon’s paper, an avalanche of criticism descended on the paper in the form of dozens of technical responses and online responses to the paper by skeptical scientists. The methodology of Wolfe-Simon’s experiment, the data analysis and the interpretation of results were all thoroughly criticized.

Here’s a video of the NASA Press Conference announcing Wolfe-Simon’s work. From 0-2:55, Wolfe-Simon provides the motivation for her work and from 2:56-9:39, Dr. Steven Benner, Founder and Distinguished Fellow of the Foundation of Applied Molecular Evolution, discusses why he is skeptical of Wolfe-Simon’s conclusions.   (attribution: rrhea22)

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Rosie Redfield, a microbiology professor at the University of British Columbia, has been one of the leading voices in the criticism of Wolfe-Simon’s work; along with a scathing blog post about Wolfe-Simon’s research two days after it was published,  she later published an article refuting Wolfe-Simon’s conclusions about the ability of GFAJ-1 to incorporate arsenic in its DNA backbone entirely. Redfield showed that GFAJ-1 was unable to substitute arsenic for phosphate in the DNA backbone through growing the microbe in the same conditions described by Wolfe-Simon, then analyzing the DNA strands for arsenic incorporation.

For all of us out there in the world fervently hoping for a new avenue of previously unexplored alien life forms, it looks like GFAJ-1 does not provide proof that there is an organism able to incorporate arsenic in place of phosphorus. This doesn’t mean there aren’t any organisms able to do this out there in the world, it just means we have to keep on exploring and researching!

References:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/02dec_monolake/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Nz_6Pbydo&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GKmKyfXuFw

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/12/this_paper_should_not_have_been_published.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/02/AR2010120204183.html

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1163.abstract

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6093/470.short

 

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Granite Vs. Quartz Countertops

Posted on October 15, 2012 by | 6 comments

The city of Vancouver has some of the world’s highest housing prices.  The average price for a detached home in Vancouver is $1,073,311.  This is an enormous amount of money and therefore it is important for buyers to receive a quality built home.  Since the heart of a home is the kitchen, countertops are a very important detail.  Due to their durability and strength, stone countertops are on top of everyone’s wish list.  A majority of the newly constructed homes use either granite or quartz countertops.  But one question arises, which is better?

This image is from homemakeoverdiva.com

 

Granite is a naturally occurring rock that forms from the cooling and solidifying of magma from the earth’s crust.  This type of formation classifies granite as an igneous rock.  Granite rocks come in a variety of colours due to their chemical composition, making it a go to countertop option because of its design flexibility.   It also is very durable in the kitchen and has minimum maintenance.  Other countertops, such as marble, need to be sealed with protective layers very often and are not able to withstand very high temperatures.  Granite on the other hand only needs to be sealed with a protective coating once a year and has a density of 2.65, making it very strong, and has a melting pointing of approximately 1250 degrees Celsius.  This allows individuals to place hot trays and pots onto granite countertops without fear of it cracking or getting destroyed.

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Video uploaded on Youtube by 

The other main competitor to granite in the housing industry is quartz.  Quartz is not a natural stone instead it is engineered.  It is a mixture of approximately 90% quartz, which is a very common mineral founds in many different types of rocks, and 10% resin, which is a hard glue like substance.  The combination of these substances makes quartz countertops very strong and durable.  It has a melting point of 1300 degrees Celsius and a density of 2.75.  Another benefit of quartz countertops is that they never need to be sealed; there is no fear or problem of liquids or food ever getting into pores in the slab.  Also because quartz rock is so widespread, it comes in very large range of colours.

A quartz crystal from factmag.com

 

Based on the data and stats of both countertops, they are fairly similar in terms of their strength.  In terms of their appearances, granite does have more variation, but due to its extremely easy maintenance, quartz is superior to granite.  Overall buyers should not be discouraged by granite countertops, but quartz countertops are slightly better in terms of their quality.

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Good news to Chocolate lovers

Posted on October 15, 2012 by | 6 comments

Yummy chocolates. Picture by WoofBC on Flickr

        Do you have to restrain yourself from indulging in that chocolate calling you from the store windows? Well, now you can loosen up a bit! The good new is that more studies are showing that chocolate is actually beneficial for your health. Most of us love chocolate. Chocolate is a popular food around the world. It is given as traditional gifts on some holidays: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas. However, we try to avoid eating chocolate whenever possible because of its fattening characteristics, and because it is addictive. Addictive things have never been good for us. However, chocolate consists of many compounds besides fats and sugar. Of the many compositions, I’ll focus on flavonoids, which naturally originate from cacao, the main ingredient in chocolate.

        In contrast to our beliefs, chocolates can have a positive effect on our health. There are still some contradicting opinions, but there has been increasing evidence of chemicals, such as flavonoids, in cacao that improve our health. On October 10, 2012, a study by Franz H. Messerli was published correlating between chocolate consumption in 23 different countries and their populations’ cognitive function. His study was based on the Nobel Prize winners to mimic the overall cognitive function of the 23 countries. It so turns out that increase in the amount of chocolate consumption does increase the number of Nobel laureates in the countries. This, as mentioned above, is due to flavonoids in the cacao. These secondary metabolites have been proven for better cognitive function[1]. For example, elderly patients reduce the risk of dementia by taking flavonoids[1]. The study’s results were that unsurprisingly, Switzerland, famous for their chocolate, was in the lead of both chocolate consumption and Nobel Prize winners. Now, I don’t think chocolate is the absolute causation of increased number of Nobel Prize winners, but according to the article, chocolate somewhat has an influence on the cognitive function.

        Furthermore, flavonoids lower blood pressure by relaxing the blood vessels in the in the brain. We all know that high blood pressure can be deadly because they are highly known for the causation of strokes and heart attacks.

Choose dark Chocolate! Picture by Boz Bros on Flickr

        An important point to note is that not all chocolates have flavonoids. Dark chocolate contains four times more flavonoids than milk chocolate, while white chocolate doesn’t have any [2]. So choose dark chocolate to satisfy your cravings and maintain your health! But of course, you shouldn’t depend on dark chocolate for better health. They, too, have calories and sugar[2]. Chocolate can help, but the key to health is healthy eating and exercise. We should consume chocolate from time to time, we might build up more stress if we have to force ourselves to stay away from it!

The following video shortly explains the health benefits of chocolate:

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Article on Messerli’s study

Article from CBC

-MinJi-

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Processors for Gaming: Old vs. New

Posted on October 15, 2012 by | 2 comments

Nobody enjoys lag and poor graphics while playing games on their computers because of a slow Central Processing Unit (CPU); so when it comes to choosing the right parts to do the job, don’t rely on advertising and pushy sales people to give you an honest choice that will give give you the best bang for your buck; after all, newer technology does not always out-do the older.

Intel’s Core i5 and Core i7 are the two of the top CPU’s on the market today, and many pre-built gaming computers will boast having the newer (and more expensive) Core i7 with ‘Hyper-threading technology.’ Take a look at the following sales points for the i7:

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Intel Core i7 advertisement (LandRoverz)

That all seems cool, but this processor is valued around $100 or even more compared to Core i5 processors, as shown below:

i5 vs i7

i5 price vs i7 in different models, i5 is much cheaper (bottom of table) despite similar specifications (Tomshardware)

So why are the i7’s worth so much more than the i5’s? The major difference that i7’s use what is called ‘hyper-threading.’ This basically means that the CPU can handle multitasking much more efficiently.

When looking solely at gaming capability however, the i7 is overkill price wise to the i5 and completely necessary because most games today do not utilize hyper-threading in the first place. That said, actual game benchmarks tell the rest of the story when comparing the two CPU’s and their relative performance (in frames per second) for the new game called Skyrim:

i5 vs i7 skyrim benchmark

benchmarks for i5 and i7 CPU’s in game ‘Skyrim’ in frames per second (higher value means smoother video output that you see). Both are relatively equal. (notebookcheck.net)

As shown above, the top i7 model produces a maximum of only 2.2 frames more per second than the oldest i5 model. This test shows that the cheaper i5 CPU’s (without hyper-threading) are on par with the newest and most expensive generation in the i7 CPU’s. The sum of these arguments is given below,

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applications of i5 and i7, which one is better for different tasks. (custompcreview)

As mentioned above, for gaming, the i5 is truly the way to go when gaming and basic applications are that majority of tasks to be done by the computer as opposed to the newer and more advanced i7 processors. This is interesting considering that in this day and age, ‘newer’ is often synonymous with ‘better’ (especially with computer science and technology advances).

Most comparison tests will render similar results to the above example, and that takes into account the fact that even the most demanding games like Skyrim do not take advantage of the hyper-threading that i7 processors boast. Thus the i5 generation of CPU’s are perfect for basic tasks and gaming and will save at least $100 if bought instead of an i7. That $100 or more that is saved by purchasing an i5 instead of i7 can go towards purchasing a nice monitor to play your games on.

-Surbinder Bolina

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Posted in Science Communication, Science Communicators

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Does the mere presence of others influence our performance?

Posted on October 15, 2012 by | 5 comments

As you may have noticed nowadays teaching systems have evolved to contain a social learning component which may contain elements such as presentations, group activities and/or projects. Based on my personal experiences as a student I have always questioned how the presence of others may affect my performance as an individual or in a group setting.

According to social psychologists there is a tendency for people to perform simple task in the presence of another person confidently and fast. In contrast, the performance of more challenging tasks can get hindered by the presence of another person. This phenomenon is referred to as social facilitation.  When others observe us we become aroused, this arousal strengthens the most likely response. Our likely response can be the correct one for an easy task and the wrong one for a difficult task.  The fear of being judged by others and the thought of it can distract our focus and interfere with our performance.

So what happens when everyone in a group is working and a task must be done as a team?

Team work

When the group is assigned to perform a task, the group members get motivated to exert less effort and instead to count on the other members; this tendency in known as social loafing.  By being a part of a group you may feel less responsible and consequently think that your contribution is dispensable.

 

If working in groups may potentially promote people to put less effort why does the current educational system put an emphasis on group interaction and cooperative learning as the best way to learn?

Does ‘Group Work’ Work? : Is It the Best Way for Children to Learn?

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It has been shown that interacting in a group can have a good and bad effect.  Group interaction can strengthen a common thought or goal, a process called group polarization. In other words a discussion between like-minded people in a group will enhance their prevailing opinion. Even though it can lead to a harmony, group polarization can encourage ‘groupthink’, through which group members fail to consider an alternative solution. In addition, group members often doubt their critiques and are pressured to agree with the group only to support the group’s integrity due to their desire to create a unified conclusion. By being knowledgeable with these phenomenon instructors can direct groups to consider alternatives as well as identifying possible problems.

Shadi Saffari

 

References :

http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-psychology.html

http://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/2009/social-facilitation/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arousal

http://www.co-operation.org/?page_id=65

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization

http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm

http://critical-thinkers.com/2010/12/7-ways-to-avoid-groupthink/

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Social_Loafing

 

video form

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdt-b4yMp-M&feature=relmfu

picture from

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/36319

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If you are afraid of snakes now… be glad you were not around during the reign of Titanoboa.

Posted on October 15, 2012 by | 5 comments

Snakes have never really been an object of fear for me personally in the past. Although, these reptiles have been the main fear of many people that I know. I have always thought that if you left them alone, they will leave you alone. If they do attack, I could probably out run them easily. However, this all changed when I learned of Titanoboa.

Imagine yourself in a world of dense swampy jungle, where the dinosaurs are gone, the earth was much warmer, and reptiles ruled the world. [1] This was Cerrejón (located in modern-day Columbia) approximately 58-milion years ago. [1] This was the world where Titanoboa, the monster snake, ruled.

Dense jungle from http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?t=55486

How was this prehistoric dead monarch discovered? It was discovered by a graduate student, Alex Hastings, when he was looking through fossils from Cerrejón in a box labelled “crocodile”. He noticed a very large and strange vertebra, and realized they this vertebra was not from a crocodile. Hastings and a fellow graduate student, Jason Bourque, compared the mysterious vertebra to the vertebra of a modern-day anaconda. The two found that the two bones were similar in appearance even though the anaconda’s vertebra was much smaller. [2] This discovery led to further investigation and with the eventual identification of Titanoboa.

What was this titan of the past like? It turns out that the size of Titanoboa may have been around 42 to 49 feet long, and could have weighted around 2,500 pounds. [2] According to the video below, the Titanoboa killed its prey by constriction. It delivered a powerful squeeze of 400 pounds per square inch. The video below puts that number into perspective, they say that it is like having three Eiffel towers stacked on top of one another crushing you.

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How did such a titan exist? It seems a little unbelievable to imagine a snake of this caliber roaming this world. Well, it turns out that Earth, during Titanoboa’s reign was much different from our own. The Earth that Titanoboa lived in, had 50 percent more carbon dioxide than today, which in turn results in a Earth much warmer than today. [2] Since, all reptiles are cold-blooded; their size essentially depends on how warm their environment is. [2] This fact, allows us to safely say that as long as we get global warming under control, new titan snakes will not appear.

Was this titan snake, at the top of the food chain? Other fossils were found at Cerrejón, including fossils of giant crocodiles and turtles. [3] These giant crocodiles could have been a possible predator to Titanoboa, but this snake was at the top of the food chain because it could easily constrict and devour these massive crocodiles whole. [3] Despite the size and ferocity of Titanoboa, it probably would not be able to dethrone the modern day apex predator, Human beings.

A scaled model of Titanoboa from http://www.dogonews.com/2012/3/26/pre-historic-titanoboa-rattles-new-york-commuters

-Dominic

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