Author Archives: meganlin2002

Camels in the Arctic?!

Traditionally, when we think of camels, we associate them with their signature humps for water storage, extreme endurance abilities and most importantly with hot desert environments. However, the most recent groundbreaking discovery on March 5th by fellow Canadian paleobiologist, Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa suggests otherwise.

‘Our camel’ by Neil and Kathy Carey. Retrieved from Flickr Creative Commons.

At the Fyles Leaf Bed site on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Rybczynski discovered 30 “wood-like” fragments that were in fact part of the lower leg bone of a camel dated to be at least 3.4 million years old! These fossil remains were collectively retrieved over a span of 3 summer excavations (in 2006, 2008 and 2010). Furthermore, several state of the art techniques were used to verify the authenticity of these fossil remains including “3D laser scanning” and “collagen fingerprinting”.

In fact, the actual alignment and assembly of the fossil fragments were conducted with the help of the 3D laser scanner which uses infrared light to record the distance between each fragment and allow detailed reconstruction of the overall leg structure. On the other hand, collagen fingerprinting technique analyzes the collagen content within samples as this protein seems to be able to survive long periods of burial time. This portion of fossil analysis was carried out by expert Dr. Mike Buckley at the University of Manchester in England.

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It is estimated that the ancient camel is about 29% bigger than our average modern camel which may have been beneficial for their survival but more research has yet to be done. Now that even camels have been found to have lived in the Arctic, what more farfetched discoveries still awaits for scientists to uncover?

-Megan Nien-I Lin

“You are what you eat”— dietary nutrients determine sleep patterns

Recent study led by Dr. Michael A. Grandner, instructor and member from the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania, shows that certain dietary nutrients may be associated with a person’s sleep pattern; specifically, in terms of the duration of sleep.

Image taken from RelaxingMusic from Flickr

In fact, from the statistical analysis, the research team found that many of the differences were largely driven by several significant, key contributing nutrients:

  • Water
  • Lycopene (commonly found in tomatoes)
  • Carbohydrates
  • Vitamin C
  • Theobromine (commonly found in chocolate)
  • Dodecanoic acid / Lauric Acid (commonly found in coconuts and palm kernel oil)
  • Choline (commonly found in eggs and fatty meats)
  • Selenium (commonly found in nuts, meat and shellfish)
  • Calcium
  • Magnesium(commonly found in broccoli and nuts)
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Based on their research findings, Grandner found that people who have very short sleep (less than 5 hours) tend to have lower intakes of water, lycopene, carbohydrates, those with short sleep (6 hours) have lower vitamin C, water, selenium and those with long sleep (more than 9 hours) have lower intakes of theobromine, dodecanoic acid, carbohydrates and choline.

With midterms still ongoing and those dreaded finals coming up, for those of us who fall under the short or very short sleep categories, perhaps by reading this blog post you might start reconsidering your daily diet and foods that you should add in or perhaps even take out.

Did you know that sleep deprivation is also known to be associated with obesity, metabolic dysregulation, cardiovascular diseases, psychiatric illnesses and performance deficits?

So, the next time when you’re having a bad morning from not sleeping enough, you should also reflect back to what and how have you been eating lately.