Added: Jun 2, 2013
"We see here that the beneficial effect on health is attributed to this dietary nutrient affecting many proteins. In its relationship with a set of specific proteins, apigenin re-establishes the normal profile in cancer cells. We think this can have great value clinically as a potential cancer-prevention strategy." Dr. Andrea Doseff, associate professor of internal medicine and molecular genetics at Ohio State and a co-lead author of the study.
Added: May 29, 2013
The whole merry scene is enlivened by songbirds. Residents such as cardinals, goldfinches and chickadees were joined weeks ago by the robins and, more recently, by such feathered treasures as yellow-rumped warblers and a pair of catbirds that call my garden their summer home year after year. This is just a partial list; I could add juncos, wrens, white-throated sparrows, doves and various raptors, including an osprey.
Added: May 23, 2013
Light is a major problem with vertical farming. When you stack plants on top of each other, the ones at the top shade the ones at the bottom. The only way to get around it is to add artificial light — which is expensive both financially and environmentally.
Vertical farmers can lower the energy bill, Mitchell says, by giving plants only the wavelengths of light they need the most: the blue and red.
Added: May 23, 2013
“This bill is a win for seafood processors, fishermen, consumers, and, ultimately, healthy and productive oceans,” Whit Sheard, a senior advisor with Oceana, said in a statement. We also muct thank Dr. Stephen Palumbi Director of Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove. He has worked on this issue for years. His book, published in November 2010, The Death and Life of Monterey Bay: A Story of Revival, is a good-news environmental story about the difference that ordinary citizens can make in creating diverse, sustainable ecosystems and diverse, sustainable economies.
Added: May 22, 2013
he camera lucida is an optical device that assists artists in drawing by projecting onto a drawing surface a image of what is in front of it. Patented in 1807, it amounts to a prism on a stick. The tool gained attention in 2001 thanks to David Hockney's book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. His thesis: the old masters didn't eyeball their work; they used optical devices, like the camera lucida. While curators were skeptical, artists like Garcia embraced Hockney's argument. Garcia purchased his first camera lucida in 2003 for $50. "I don't think the seller knew what they had. It was listed as a drawing tool," he admitted. Most camera lucidas sell upwards of $300 on eBay.
Added: May 22, 2013
Auto makers are under mounting state regulatory pressure in about a dozen states to accelerate electric-car sales. California greenhouse-gas rules, for instance, require that, by 2018, some 4.5% of the cars major auto makers sell in the state be "zero-emission" vehicles—that is, no emissions from the car.
Car makers are lobbying the federal government to block the California mandate. But some are also boosting efforts to convince more people that electric cars make sense. One reason: Selling more high-mileage cars allows auto makers to market greater numbers of larger, more profitable vehicles, under the complex government emission-regulation schemes.
This is how market thinks. Have you ever thought outside the box about this? Can we create a culture where there is no market as we know it today? Is there a possibility that we can create a way consumers can "trust purchase" a car from a "automobile trust"? This "trust purchase" would mean that a person can borrow an automobile from the...
Added: May 20, 2013
The catastrophic drought last year in the Horn of Africa affected millions of people but also caused the extremely late arrival into northern Europe of several migratory songbird species, a study published December 6 in Science shows. Details of the migration route was revealed by data collected from small backpacks fitted on birds showing that the delay resulted from an extended stay in the Horn of Africa.
Added: May 20, 2013
...he first attached motion-capture electrodes on the limbs and torsos of several human subjects and had them walk around in the U-M 3-D lab. He used the recordings of their motions to make true-to-life animations. Then by simulating their Doppler radar reflection over time, he identified a general pattern that he could program a computer to recognize. It's a spiky graph to the untrained eye, but to Sarabandi, it represents "the DNA of walking." To confirm that it was specific to humans, he compared it with the signal from a walking dog -- a short-haired Labrador.
Added: May 20, 2013
Overfishing has reduced fish populations and biodiversity across much of the world's oceans. In response, fisheries are increasingly reliant on a handful of highly valuable shellfish. However, new research by the University of York shows this approach to be extremely risky.
Added: May 20, 2013
Thanks to a process involving enzymes to digest food, poultry left-overs such as bone and meat trimmings can be converted into proteins dubbed functional animal proteins hydrolyzates. They differ from existing protein hydrolyzates, from eggs, buttermilk, or fish already on the market in that they have a higher content of nutritionally useful amino acids. They can be used as supplements for sports diet, to help build up muscle tissue, and as additives in processed food, for example. So far, some of their properties -- namely prebiotic, antimicrobiotic, antioxidant and hypotensive -- have been demonstrated in vitro.
Ice cream? One of the project partners, Mobitek-M, which is a Russian company specialised in production of protein-enriched food stuffs, is also planning on including these products into ice-cream, under the follow-up Rosano Project. They have built a plant in the Belgorod region of the Russian Federation, which is about to start of transforming functional animal protein at...
Added: May 19, 2013
Snowy Plover is lighter than a stick of butter. Its habitat is threatened because of the water issue in the Monterey Bay Area. Have you ever asked yourself why there are migrations in the first place? Here is on study with a logical answer:
(They) found that directional migration has a profound impact on the population structure. It drives individuals to form a number of dense clusters, which resembles social cohesion. In these clusters, individuals organise into a well-functioning group in which there are shared goals and a readiness to cooperate with others.
Read our answer in our Science/Art Essay #2
The Egret in Me
Added: May 19, 2013
"Understanding the behaviour of these birds during migration is crucial for identifying important at-sea locations and for furthering conservation efforts. By tracking the movements, foraging behaviour and environmental drivers of such species, and developing new techniques to do so is critical as they continue to be subject to environmental and anthropogenic pressure." says Dr. Robin Freeman, from the UCL COMPLEX (Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology)
Added: May 19, 2013
painting by Mary Kay King
A coastal marsh is not the place for an artist to set up as an artist; the easel, the canvas, the box full of oils, the palette. Too many pieces. “So many brushes. I could fill a quiver,” Mary said as she reached into her pigment box on the back seat of her car and pulled out a few promising brushes. As she stepped carefully into the marsh, she scolded it. “Oh no! Too slippery. Too wet. Too soft.” She felt a gust of Santa Ana wind swirl around her causing her to grab her hat just as it was leaving her head. She began balancing herself, shifting her weight from one mud boot to the other as she carefully stepped through the mud. “He was standing right here yesterday. Did he leave already?” She asked some fairy shrimp that were swimming on their backs in a pool of marsh water. “Where is he?” She looked all around the marsh before spotting him just beyond a mound of hardstem bulrush.
“There he is,” Mary lowered the legs of her easel into the mud, set her palette...
Added: May 19, 2013
This is a game changer for all of us! Tell all teachers and parents you know about this event!
Added: May 8, 2013
Results suggest that restricting food intake increases the reward value of food, particularly high-calorie, appetizing food (chocolate milkshakes), and that the more successful people are at caloric-restriction dieting, the greater difficulty they will face in maintaining the restriction. This study focuses on "reward value" when caloric intake is restricted. So, be careful if you are trying the stay on a diet. Once you go off the diet the reward value comes into play big time!
Added: May 8, 2013
"Farming practices for food safety that target wildlife are damaging valuable ecological systems despite low risk from these animals," said lead author Sasha Gennet.
Check the back of your bag of spinach or prepackaged salad greens, and you'll probably find that they came from the Salinas Valley. Salad is big business in California.
Added: May 8, 2013
Dr Gagliano explained, "Our results show that plants are able to positively influence growth of seeds by some as yet unknown mechanism." Could this be the discovery of a kind of photogoogle process going on?
Added: May 4, 2013
"This technology effectively creates a 'closed-loop' system that mimics the activity of the pancreas in a healthy person, releasing insulin in response to glucose level changes," Gu says. "This has the potential to improve the health and quality of life of diabetes patients." Notice the sources are shrimp and seaweed. How did scientists figure out where to look to use the important molecules in shrimp and seaweed for their diabetic work? This is what makes science so exciting. There are pieces we can use as important parts to solutions to our diseases everywhere in nature. If you suffer from diabetes, talk to your doctor about the posibility of this new method of treating this disease.
Added: Apr 26, 2013
Recently, Michael Jacobson Ph.D., executive director of CSPI, commissioned talented individuals from The Real Bears to begin to tell the real story of the damage these molecules have on the body, especially our childrens' bodies. In the video a polar bear family has an overwhelming amount of sadness due to the devastating health issues that are borne out of the consumption of sugary drinks. We see them suffer an amputation by Dr. Fox, tooth decay, and impotence. This video hints what happens in our own hospital surgery suites. Surgery suites in our hospitals are rented out by a "Dr.Fox" for 60,000 amputations per year in this country. Some of these amputations are on obese children. You may not want to hear this, but this is the truth. And herein lies the sadness for all of us. The real extension of this truth comes to mind when you ask yourself How did we get here? How did this happen in our culture? We love our children. What's going on? Read Bearing With Coke article by Dr. David...
Added: Apr 22, 2013
Initial results showed fruit sales increased by an average of 61%, when the fruit was sliced. Results showed that apple sales in schools with fruit slicers increased by 71% compared to control schools. More importantly, researchers found that the percentage of students who ate more than half of their apple increased by 73%, an effect that lasted long after the study was over.
This exciting result also occurs when you hang up our Healthy Choices flyer in the home kitchen. Consumption of healthy foods increases significantly because children make healthier choices when they see them each and every day. To view our Healthy Choices flyers and posters go to: www.starchildscience.org/healthy-living-initiative and on our products page www.starchildscience.org/products