Science 2.0

A new scaremongering story about food and cancer is making the rounds but before you run off to find comfort in the arms of Mark Hyman, Mehmet Oz, or Joe Mercola, keep one thing in mind.

This is in mice. This stuff is always in mice or a statistical correlation, which means without real science showing it in humans, it is not relevant to humans.

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The first analysis of data from the Kardiozive Brno 2030 study examines the association of pet ownership -- specifically dog ownership -- with cardiovascular disease risk factors and cardiovascular health.

It finds that owning a pet may help maintain a healthy heart, especially if that pet is a dog.

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Not so long ago it was thought that Amazonian forests and other tropical rainforest regions were completely immune to fires, thanks to the high moisture content of the undergrowth beneath the protection of the canopy tree cover. But the severe droughts of 1997-98, 2005, 2010, and currently a large number of wildfires across northern Brazil have forever changed this perception.

These severe ‘mega-droughts’ in the Amazon were most likely driven by interacting large-scale climatic events, with the warming of the Atlantic increasingly outweighing the drying effects of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events in the Pacific.

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Members of the United States military who are injuried abroad often return to the U.S. for treatment and must be transported by aeromedical evacuation between medical facilities.

Evacuations can lead to their own chronic and acute stress, on top of the injuries and potential psychological trauma. 

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In the summer of 2018, the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft arrived at the Ryugu asteroid and in October of that year sent out the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) lander to gather information about the surface.

Now the images taken during its 17 hour mission have revealed something interesting. The asteroid, just over half a mile in diameter, has rocks like carbonaceous chondrite meteorites but there seems to be no dust, like is on the moon. The rocks are instead "bright, with smooth faces and sharp edges, or dark, with a cauliflower-like, crumbly surface."

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I didn't even know Scientific American Blogs still existed. They do, they were just irrelevant and no one remembered until a few days ago. Given their recent foray into nonsense, it can be the next place where denier for hire Paul Thacker pretends to be a journalist.

Scientific American Blogs was the brainchild of blogging wunderkind Bora Zivkovic, who left Scienceblogs for PLOS, to build a blog network for them, and then when Scientific American wanted to retry blogging they recruited him.

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Increased consumption of omega 3 fats is widely promoted because of a recent belief that it will protect against, or even reverse, conditions such as type 2 diabetes. 

Fads always start with a kernel of scientific truth, as happened with acai berries, chocolate, red wine, and whatever probiotic or yogurt is being for the microbiome sold this week. Omega 3 is a type of fat and small amounts are essential for good health and can be found in the food that we eat.

But a systematic review commissioned by the World Health Organization and published today in the British Medical Journal finds that omega 3 supplements offer no benefit.

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A bipartisan duo has floated the idea of putting an end to having 50 rules for 50 states when it comes to labels on genetically modified foods. The federal government is usually hands off about processes that don't involve safety - they don't do spot testing of organic or kosher food, for example they rely on companies to be honest in filling out paperwork and for the public to be punitive when food makers are unethical. Likewise, GMO is just a process, so the FDA and the USDA hasn't much cared, as long as products show substantial equivalence.

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Though an entire $2 billion industry has been built scaring people about the modern world (which has promoted a $35 billion supplement market and a $110 billion Organic industry) we're in a Golden Age.

Even the poorest people can afford food, what were once booms and busts of famine and plenty have now leveled off, poverty declines are ahead of U.N. goals, and even centralized energy in developing countries, which could help a billion people, is attainable if western states stop telling poor nations they can only get World Bank help if it's not coal, natural gas, or nuclear. 

And we can prevent cancer for the first time. 

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Ben&Jerry's is not going to roll out ice cream derived from geneticaly modified cells in a lab any time soon - their buying demographic hates science (although their parent conglomerate Unilever loves it) - but the public wants it now.

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Organic food has no surprise spot testing, and no testing at all from its clients like Environmental Working Group, in the U.S. you just have to rely on the willingness of over 80 groups that are in the business of selling stickers to believe their clients - the people who pay them and keep them in business.

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Will beer and fights become the newest health craze?

Though the stereotype of Australian men is the tough, beer-drinking Alpha - they popularized running face-first while rappelling down cliffs among armies across the world - but they must live pretty health lives because they lead the world in longevity.

Australian men, on average, live to 74.1. And women are doing well also. Only Switzerland surpasses the land down under for females. 

Lagged Cohort Life Expectancy

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Type 2 diabetes develops when the body becomes resistant to insulin or the pancreas becomes unable to produce enough insulin.  Though there is sometimes a genetic factor but it is overwhelmingly a lifestyle disease caused by being overweight and inactive. The pancreas simply becomes overworked.

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Having one of the most powerful bites in the animal kingdom, crocodiles must be able to bite hard to eat their food such as turtles, wildebeest and other large prey.  Well, so do we, but we don't have exceptionally tough teeth and neither do crocodiles.

However, we do have relatively thick enamel on our teeth, which can get ruined over time without proper care. 

Crocodiles don't even have that. They have thin tooth enamel, the opposite of humans and other hard-biting species, as their plant-eating ancestors did. But unlike humans, when their teeth go bad, they seem to just grow new ones.


Fossilized crocodile teeth. Image: University of Missouri

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Mung bean protein, canola oil, onion puree and turmeric - it's what's for breakfast. Maybe.

Fake versions of foods are all the rage but egg farmers who survived the Vegg ("nutritional yeast flakes, Sodium alginate, Kala Namak, beta-carotene") can't rest easy just yet. Joining any number of eggless egg substitute concoctions, Just Egg is rolling out in 2,100 Kroger stores nationwide.

Unlike most others, which are just used as a leavening agent or a binder so egg is substituted by xantham gum or tofu or some other chemical and isn't really for cooking, three tablespoons of Just Egg is touted to be just like a regular egg and can be used for an omelet or scramble.

So if you don't want to eat liquid chicken, you can eat whatever this is instead.

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Happy Family Organics has another win, by expanding the number of states in which participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) can purchase its jars of "organic" baby food.

The company also claims it is making packaging commitments that "support a more circular economy" but the beginning of that circle need to be the price poor people pay, not fuzzy-wuzzy marketing claims about whatever "sustainability" is pretending to be this week.

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Iceland is not really icy and Greenland is not really green (nor it is for sale, it seems) so Iceland prizes its glaciers. One, Okjokull glacier, disappeared 10 years ago so they recently decided to give it a funeral in a the made-for-media political theater memorial that only unemployed people mobilized by professional activists have time to engage in.
 
About 100 people actually did walk up the volcano, with the kids (naturally) featured prominently. 

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Short summary: we have had wild fires for many years now in the Amazon, even in the tropical rainforest - mainly started by humans for forest clearing and ranching. It is not enough to impact significantly on the Paris agreement pledges yet though it is important in the long term if this continues for decades.

The ranchers use fire for forest clearing, "slash and burn agriculture" as it is called. That is because it is much easier to convert forest into grassland by burning it than to do it by felling the trees. Once it is cut, the way they manage the pastures is to reburn them every few years to clear out the brush and to get the grass to resprout.

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Artificial Cranial Deformation (ACD) is the practice of modifying the skull from infancy to create a permanently altered shape, often to signify social status.

In a new study, genetic, isotopic and skeletal analysis of three human skeletons dating to 415-560 AD excavated from the Hermanov vinograd archaeological site in Osijek Croatia revealed that all were males between 12 and 16 years of age at death and that they all suffered from malnutrition.

They are not obviously of different social status, but genetic analysis found that the two with cranial modifications exhibited very distinct ancestries, one from the Near East and the other from East Asia. 

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Whether or not to allow unchecked illegal immigration from Mexico is a U.S. political debate but left out of it is how poorly Mexico allows migrants to be treated along the way.

Mexico is not the only place where this is a problem. People trying to avoid immigration laws face peril around the world, no matter what country they visit but America provides the largest undefended borders in the world so the problem is just more easily seen here. 

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