Category Archives: Statistics

Can seahorse protection lead to a better approach to marine conservation?

Posted on November 28, 2018 by | Leave a comment

In the past few decades, ecological protection has gradually become a greater concern for more and more people; however, how can we effectively protect the earth’s ecology if the vast majority of it is still alien to us, especially the ocean? Recently, we were given the chance to interview Dr.Xiong Zhang, an expert on seahorse conservation, he explained why protecting small species such as seahorses can be helpful in protecting many marine ecosystems.

Image of a seahorse
Picture retrieved from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/12/15/world/science-health-world/undersea-mystery-genetic-secrets-seahorse-unveiled/

 

Dr.Xiong Zhang during the interview

Dr.Zhang, who is a zoology Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia, recently conducted his case study on predicting locations where seahorses are commonly found along the coastal areas in China. The main role of his study is to help protect seahorses which can improve the maintenance of many shallow sea environments. A point of interest is the reason Dr. Zhang chose seahorses, and how he believes their protection can lead to maintaining shallow sea ecosystems. 

China coastal area
picture retrieved from https://medium.com/civic-analytics/signal-2-environmental-impacts-of-land-reclamation-in-china-under-climate-change-background-981edb2d7bf9

 

First, Dr.Zhang explained why he focuses on seahorses; there are three main reasons:

Seahorses are distributed in a variety of geological locations

Seahorses have many subspecies, and each of them requires different living conditions for habitat; for example, some prefer warm water temperatures and some prefer higher concentrations of salt. These factors make seahorses as a whole widely distributed globally, however,  suitable living environments are scarce for them at the same time. 

Seahorses are extremely sensitive to changes in an environment

Different types of seahorse subspecies
Picture retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/

The limitations for the seahorses are not only due to habitat requirements but also partly because of its own living habits. Seahorses need to hook on structures on the seafloor to survive; without these structures, they will drift away with the current. As a result, seahorses are confined to areas with special structures on the seafloor. The destruction on an area with such structures will lead to complete elimination of a local seahorse population. 

Seahorses can be used as indicators to measure the wellness of local ecosystems

Since seahorses are “picky” in choosing their habitats, there are few places that are ideal for them, they can be used to determine whether an ecosystem is healthy. These areas often have unique characteristics, making them extremely sensitive to ecological changes. Therefore, in this particular environment, if there is a significant decrease in the number of seahorses, experts can reasonably infer that this is caused by habitat destruction.

Image of coral reef mangroves.
Picture retrieved from:
https://www.leonardodicaprio.org/protecting-coral-reefs-and-mangroves-indonesia

With all that in mind, how do we go from protecting seahorses to maintaining shallow sea environments? From previous answers, we can see that seahorses are marine animals that very dependent on their habitat; as a result, protecting their habitat is the best way to protect their population. While protecting seahorse’s habitats, we can also protect many creatures in the same environment. Using the seahorse as a starting point, we can protect organisms in a small area; when many small areas are protected, the experts will be able to maintain the ecology of the nearby shallow water on a larger scale. Therefore, protecting the seahorse is a point-to-point approach to secure the shallow sea ecosystems. Dr. Zhang’s findings effectively predict the habitat of seahorses on a large-scale from limited data, and the short video below briefly describes the process.

YouTube Preview Image

If the above video doesn’t work click: Video link

The result mapped by Dr.Zhang for 4 different subspecies of seahorses.

After drawing such a relatively precise map for the locations of seahorses, experts and authorities can make decisions of conservation more effectively. When we asked Dr. Zhang if his research had been put to practical use, he gave us a positive answer: “there is one province in the south, Guangxi province, considered my research very important and they added the seahorse habitat in the conservation planning, in its local area.”

When Dr. Zhang indicated research plans for the future, he told us: “In the future, the degree of seahorse protection will definitely increase for sure, and there are lots of local people that really care about the sustainability of the livelihood for seahorse “

In the end, Dr. Zhang told us, although we can’t say that at the current stage seahorses are well protected, but based on his research, more experts will see the importance of seahorses. Though this, more research will be focusing on seahorses in the future. Furthermore, as technology and information advance, the protection of seahorses will be more perfected. This point-to-point approach on the protection of one animal will also be more effective in protecting our shallow sea ecosystems in the future.


 

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication, Statistics

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5 ways to eat eggs bad for your health

Posted on October 21, 2018 by | 2 comments

Why people need to eat eggs

Eggs are one of the healthiest and the most commonly consumed food in the world. 

They have a high nutritional value because they contain various trace elements and kinds of essential vitamins needed by the human body, such as protein, vitamin D, B vitamins, minerals, and so on. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recent news about eating eggs

With the improvement of living conditions, people’s requirements on diet have been gradually improved. In today’s society, people are more and more about their health. As part of a balanced diet, people like to eat eggs to supplement nutrition. However, recent news on newspapers shows eats eggs can cause heart disease because of the high protein. Therefore, whether eating eggs bad or good to human health has caused concern.

  High protein in eggs

The protein required for people is 0.8g per kilogram of body weight. According to the dietary reference intake for protein, we can find:

  1. 56g protein required by the average sedentary man per day
  2. 46g protein required by the average sedentary woman per day

One large egg can provide about 6g protein, which makes up over 10% of the average sedentary man required per day and 12.5% of the average sedentary woman required per day.

To prevent side effects of eating eggs, people should pay attention to the following ways of eating eggs.

1. Eating raw eggs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some people think that if food is cooked, it would lose its nutritional value. Therefore, many people like to eat raw vegetables and seafood, and they think that raw eggs have a higher nutritional value than cooked eggs.

However, eating raw eggs are more likely to carry bacteria, such as coli into the stomach, which can cause gastrointestinal discomfort and Diarrhea. In addition, the raw egg white contains Avidin, which only can be destroyed by high temperature. The Avidin can affect the absorption of the biotin in food, and cause many unpleasant symptoms, such as inappetence, muscle ache, skin inflammation, eyebrow fell off, and so on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Cooking eggs for a long time

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some people think that more time used to cook eggs, it is better for human health. However, it is also wrong because if the egg is cooked for a long time, the ferrous ions in the yolk would combine with the sulfur ions in the egg white to form the insoluble ferrous sulfide, which is difficult to be absorbed. 

Also, fried eggs would be too old and the edges would be scorched when they are cooked for a long time. The polymer-protein in the egg white can form low molecular amino acid, which could form harmful chemicals to human health under high temperature.

 

3. Eating too many eggs in a day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If people eat too many eggs, the metabolites and the burden on the kidneys would increase, which can cause kidney failure symptoms. 

Here are a few effective tips:

For the elderly people, they can eat 1~2 eggs per day.

For the young and middle-aged people who engage in mental work or light manual labor, they can eat 2 eggs per day.

For people who engage in heavy manual labor, they need to consume more nutrition. So they can eat 2~3 eggs per day.

For young children, they can eat 2~3 eggs per day because of their fast metabolism.

For Pregnant women, lying-in women, breastfeeding women, individuals with weak immune systems and the patient that undertakes postoperative convalescence, they can eat 3 ~ 4 eggs per day because they need to get enough protein.

4. Eating eggs with sugar or soy milk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many people like to cook eggs with sugar, but eggs can react with sugar under high temperature, and produce a substance called Glycolysis, which can destroy the amino acids in eggs. It is important to note that glycolysis has side effects on blood coagulation, which can harm human health. Therefore, people should leave eggs cool down before adding sugar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition, many people like to have an egg, a bread, and a cup of soy milk for breakfast. In fact, the Trypsin in soy can combine with the egg pine protein in the egg white, which can cause nutrient loss and reduce their nutritional value.

5. Eating excess eggs on an empty stomach

If people consume excessive food with high protein, such as milk, soy milk, eggs and meat, the protein would be conversed forcedly into energy consumption, which cannot provide nutrition to people.

What’s more, when human body accumulates excess protein in a short period, the protein decomposition process can produce a variety of harmful substances that can bad for human health, such as urea, ammonia compounds, and so on.

In brief, if people pay attention to ways to eat eggs, eating eggs can help people meet their demand for protein, and it can bring many advantages to human health.

Information Attribute from

Denise Hill(n.d): https://www.lifehack.org/488728/10-foods-to-eat-and-avoid-on-an-empty-stomach-for-better-digestive-health

Estherjane13(Feb23,2017): http://www.thewholesomefork.com/2017/02/23/how-many-eggs-is-it-safe-to-eat-per-day/

Haley Hernandez(Sep 13,2018): https://www.click2houston.com/health/is-eating-eggs-good-or-bad-for-you-

Healthline(July23,2016): https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/eating-raw-eggs#section3

Healthline(Aug26,2016): https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/eating-healthy-eggs

GirlsTalkinSmack(n.d.): http://women.girlstalkinsmack.com/Food/foods-you-should-not-eat-with-eggs.aspx

JayneLeonard(Oct3,2018): https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323251.php    

Zhou LU

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Statistics

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Pareto’s Distribution – A Real Problem

Posted on October 1, 2018 by | Leave a comment

If you have ever been in a statistics class, you might have heard of the “Normal Distribution”. This distribution tells us that most things fall within the middle  and the extremes exist in small quantities. You can think of IQ following this pattern. The average person has an IQ of 100, less people have an IQ of 130 and even fewer people have Albert Einstein’s IQ of 160 – don’t we all wish we did. There are many variations of this and the distribution looks like a mountain, looking something like this:

Image result for normal distribution

photo credit: Wikipedia

This distribution describes many types of observations such a student’s grades, people’s heights, people’s blood pressure, shoe size and much more. It is a natural occurrence we observe in society and more importantly in the characteristics of people, such as people’s heights. This is important for society because it helps to understand what people need.  Imagine if the average height of Canadians were 2.3m tall, we would definitely have much higher doors!

DOES the Normal Distribution RELATE TO OUR LIVES?

Seemingly, the word “normal” in normal distribution supposes that all occurrences in nature and society would display this pattern. However, this might not be the case. In fact, many cases in physics, biology, earth and planetary sciences, economics, computer science, demography and social sciences follow a different distribution – the Pareto distribution. The Pareto distribution is quite the opposite of the normal distribution and tells us that most of the data exist in the extremes. It is therefore more commonly known as the “80-20” law which means 80% of what is measured exists in 20% of the population. Examples of the Pareto distribution is the sizes of cities, earthquakes, and forest fires.

To look at this more closely, let’s look at the sizes of cities and towns in the United States of America. There are around 20,000 cities in the country. If the population of these cities followed the normal distribution then we would expect most of the cities to have an equal population size and only a few extreme cities to have a high amount of people and a low amount of people. However, we see that most people live in big cities such as Las Vegas and New York and the overwhelming majority of people live in a small number of cities. The following graph shows the percentages of cities in USA and the population of those cities.  

Image result for pareto distribution population

photo credit: Newman, MEJ

The graph to the right displays a simpler display of the population of the US cities by doing some math. We can think of it as there being ten small suburbs surrounding a big city and ten of those cities surrounding a metropolitan city. We can also see it in Canada where metropolitan cities such as Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto are few in number but hold the majority of the population, while there are many more smaller cities spread across Canada with a small population.

Some other things that are interesting that follow this distribution is the numbers of citations to scientific papers, the numbers of copies of bestselling books sold, the diameter of craters on the moon, the length of relationships between couples, the frequency of family names, and people’s incomes.

Why should we care?

The Pareto distribution is particularly interesting because it shows that the natural state of things in a society can differ immensely. Even with books, although there are many authors that write books, only a handful make it on to the top-seller list. And in relationships, couples who are great with relationships last for decades, while couples who are poor with relationships can never break past one year. There is another topic that is widely debated about in society that follows the Pareto distribution which is wealth distribution. When we hear politicians blame the rich for poverty and income inequality – a big problem in society – one should wonder what a scientist’s perspective to the problem would be. We know in a more capitalistic society like America, 85% of the income is owned by the top 15% of the population.

YouTube Preview Image

Interestingly enough, this is the reality of how wealth distributes itself in a free society. You might have heard the term “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” Through out history, societies have tried to rectify this phenomena and failed. But politics aside, a reality that we must face is the purple elephant in the room named Pareto.

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Posted in Issues in Science, Science Communication, Statistics

5 ways to eat eggs bad for your health

Posted on September 30, 2018 by | Leave a comment

Why people need to eat eggs

Eggs are one of the healthiest and the most commonly consumed food in the world. 

They have a high nutritional value because they contain various trace elements and kinds of essential vitamins needed by the human body, such as protein, vitamin D, B vitamins, minerals, and so on. 

 

Recent news about eating eggs

With the improvement of living conditions, people’s requirements on diet have been gradually improved. In today’s society, people are more and more about their health. As part of a balanced diet, people like to eat eggs to supplement nutrition. However, recent news on newspapers shows eats eggs can cause heart disease because of the high protein. Therefore, whether eating eggs bad or good to human health has caused concern.

High protein in eggs

The protein required for people is 0.8g per kilogram of body weight.

According to the dietary reference intake for protein, we can find:

  1. 56g protein required by the average sedentary man per day
  2. 46g protein required by the average sedentary woman per day

One large egg can provide about 6g protein, which makes up over 10% of the average sedentary man required per day and 12.5% of the average sedentary woman required per day.

To prevent side effects of eating eggs, people should pay attention to the following ways of eating eggs.

1. Eating raw eggs

Some people think that if food is cooked, it would lose its nutritional value. Therefore, many people like to eat raw vegetables and seafood, and they think that raw eggs have a higher nutritional value than cooked eggs.

However, eating raw eggs are more likely to carry bacteria, such as coli into the stomach, which can cause gastrointestinal discomfort and Diarrhea. In addition, the raw egg white contains Avidin, which only can be destroyed by high temperature. The Avidin can affect the absorption of the biotin in food, and cause many unpleasant symptoms, such as inappetence, muscle ache, skin inflammation, eyebrow fell off, and so on.

2. Cooking eggs for a long time

Some people think that more time used to cook eggs, it is better for human health. However, it is also wrong because if the egg is cooked for a long time, the ferrous ions in the yolk would combine with the sulfur ions in the egg white to form the insoluble ferrous sulfide, which is difficult to be absorbed. 

Also, fried eggs would be too old and the edges would be scorched when they are cooked for a long time. The polymer-protein in the egg white can form low molecular amino acid, which could form harmful chemicals to human health under high temperature.

3. Eating too many eggs in a day

If people eat too many eggs, the metabolites and the burden on the kidneys would increase, which can cause kidney failure symptoms. 

Here are a few effective tips:

For the elderly people, they can eat 1~2 eggs per day.

For the young and middle-aged people who engage in mental work or light manual labor, they can eat 2 eggs per day.

For people who engage in heavy manual labor, they need to consume more nutrition. So they can eat 2~3 eggs per day.

For young children, they can eat 2~3 eggs per day because of their fast metabolism.

For Pregnant women, lying-in women, breastfeeding women, individuals with weak immune systems and the patient that undertakes postoperative convalescence, they can eat 3 ~ 4 eggs per day because they need to get enough protein.

4. Eating eggs with sugar or soy milk

Many people like to cook eggs with sugar, but eggs can react with sugar under high temperature, and produce a substance called Glycolysis, which can destroy the amino acids in eggs. It is important to note that glycolysis has side effects on blood coagulation, which can harm human health. Therefore, people should leave eggs cool down before adding sugar.

In addition, many people like to have an egg, a bread, and a cup of soy milk for breakfast. In fact, the Trypsin in soy can combine with the egg pine protein in the egg white, which can cause nutrient loss and reduce their nutritional value.

5. Eating excess eggs on an empty stomach

If people consume excessive food with high protein, such as milk, soy milk, eggs and meat, the protein would be conversed forcedly into energy consumption, which cannot provide nutrition to people.

What’s more, when human body accumulates excess protein in a short period, the protein decomposition process can produce a variety of harmful substances that can bad for human health, such as urea, ammonia compounds, and so on.

In brief, if people pay attention to ways to eat eggs, eating eggs can help people meet their demand for protein, and it can bring many advantages to human health.

Information Attribute from:

Denise Hill: https://www.lifehack.org/488728/10-foods-to-eat-and-avoid-on-an-empty-stomach-for-better-digestive-health

Estherjane13: http://www.thewholesomefork.com/2017/02/23/how-many-eggs-is-it-safe-to-eat-per-day/

Haley Hernandez: https://www.click2houston.com/health/is-eating-eggs-good-or-bad-for-you-

Healthline: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/eating-raw-eggs#section3

Healthline: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/eating-healthy-eggs

GirlsTalkinSmack: http://women.girlstalkinsmack.com/Food/foods-you-should-not-eat-with-eggs.aspx

Jayne Leonard: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323251.php

 

 

Zhou LU

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