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Microbes come to the rescue for Celiac's Disease?
Ciliac's disease is a debilitating condition where sufferers have an immunologic reaction to gluten, a protein commonly found in wheat, barley, and rye. Consumption of gluten results in severe digestive issues and other health problems. Researchers at Boston University, Headed by Eva Helmerhorst, have described the isolation of a protease from Rothia mucilaginosa that is capable of degrading the epitope in gluten that causes the immune response. After isolation, the enzyme was compared to other...
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The earth’s family tree just got bigger
Professor Jillian Banfield’s group has been research the diversity of various communities for many years. As the power of DNA sequencing has moved from a being able to generate a 500 bp in 2 weeks in the 1980, to thousands of basepairs a day in the 1990’s, to hundreds of thousands in 2000, and now with illumina technology, billions of base pairs a day, so has our understanding of what makes up the environment. Up until a few years ago, a molecular census of of a microbial community would involve...
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GMO food of no real danger
I love science and microbiology. I love fitness and nutrition. If you take care of your body and feed it well, it goes a long way to having great quality of life. So I am always interested in fitness and nutrition.
Having the perspective of a scientist, any claims I read for a fitness routine or nutrition regimen have to backed by good solid evidence. This can be very hard to come by. Nutrition research is extremely difficult, because you are dealing with food. The fo...
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Glyphosate appears to not cause cancer
Science Insider reports that a recent evaluation from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) declares that glyphosate is unlikely to increase the risk of cancer. They also set a limit on what is thought to be a safe does, 0.5 mg per kilogram of body weight. So someone weighing 80 kilograms (166 pounds) could consume 40 mg of glyphosate a day and run no increased risk of cancer. Other agencies have weighed into this in the last few years and concluded that there is some risk. The difficul...
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Hepatitis C, what was once incurable, can now be cured
Hepatitis C (HPVC) is a virus that attacks the liver, and will take up residence for the long term. The body is unable to rid itself of the virus and it will continue to replicate in the liver, potentially leading to cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer and potentially death. Recently some powerful new drugs have won approval that treat various parts of the HPVC replication cycle. Jon Cohen reports in Science Magazine of a new treatment combining the most promising of these drugs into...
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The 5th edition of Through the Microscope is now available
After several months of hard work, updating the textbook, working on site design, and upgrading the code, the 5th edition of Through the Microscope is now ready. The new edition includes:
New information on bacterial division
An updated section describing the bacterial cytoskeleton
A completely updated Microbial Ecology section
A new more efficient site design that makes using the textbook easier
AJAX code that makes available new book tools for working with the textbook
and...
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Dynamix is Dynamite
The last day of the week it is an option to take a rest day. If you are feeling good and not hurting too bad, I really recommend you do the Dynamix workout. It is not demanding and is so good for working out the kinks. After a week of P90X3 I was sore all over, not too bad, but I was feeling it. However, I really wanted to explore this DVD so I popped it in and I am glad I did. This is the final workout of the first cycle and it works outs out all your kinks and helps with mobility. It is a reco...
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The Warrior Workout
This is the workout that Tony developed for traveling around the country to various Military bases. He was faced with an interesting problem, how do I create a workout that a ton of people can do at once, that doesn't require any equipment, large amounts of space, and is challenging. The answer is, The Warrior. This is an intense workout that challenges all your muscles. It is broken down into 4 complexes of 4 moves each; an upper body move, a lower body move, a core move and a cardio/plyo m...
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CVX
When I first saw this I wondered what does CVX stand for? From doing the workout I think it stands for CardioVascular X, and this is Tony's idea of an aerobic workout. I think a better name would be Med Ball Hell. In CVX you do a bunch of moves designed to get your heart rate up and then add a med ball (or dumbbell) to add resistance to what you are doing on the upper body. The combination is a challenge. I started with a 10 pound med ball and after a few exercises I moved down to a 6 pounde...
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