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Maintaining Energy Balance During Races May Protect Cyclists’ Bones, Researcher Says

May 6, 2010 By

A new MU study reveals that proper nutrition during multi-day stage races might prevent harmful changes in bone turnover in cyclists. Credit: Picture by James F. Perry.

The recent start of the North American cycling season marks the beginning of a physically demanding time for elite and professional bicycle racers who participate in multi-day stage races. Previous research has found that competitive cyclists have significantly lower bone mineral density (BMD) than other endurance athletes, making them more susceptible to fractures. The reasons for the reduced bone mass in elite cyclists are not fully understood, but one explanation is an imbalance between bone formation and bone breakdown due to the high-energy cost of stage racing. However, a new University of Missouri study reveals that proper nutrition during multi-day stage races might prevent harmful changes in bone turnover.

MU researchers found that athletes who maintained energy balance by matching their energy intake to their energy expenditure showed increased markers of bone turnover – the process of breaking down old bone and forming new bone. Because the increase in bone formation was greater than the increase in bone breakdown, the researchers concluded that these changes were not likely to negatively affect bone mass in the long-term.

“The findings suggest that participation in stage races might not have negative effects on bone turnover if energy intake matches the energy cost of high-intensity racing over several days,” said Pam Hinton, associate professor in the Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology. “The results are consistent with the practical recommendation that elite cyclists should match their energy intake to the high energy demands of stage racing.”

In the study, Hinton examined markers of bone formation and bone breakdown in the blood of elite cyclists who participated in the Tour of Southland, a six-day, 10-stage cycling race. Hinton found significant increases in markers of bone formation and bone breakdown among the athletes whose energy intake matched their energy expenditure throughout the race.

Disrupted bone turnover, that is, reduced bone formation and increased bone breakdown, due to inadequate energy intake relative to expenditure is just one possible cause of low BMD among cyclists. Other factors include low-body weight, increased loss of calcium through sweat and significant time spent cycling, which exerts only minimal mechanical loading on the skeleton.

“This study measured only the short-term effects of stage racing on bone turnover; future studies should assess the long-term effects,” Hinton said. PhysOrg

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CO2 Effects On Plants Increases Global Warming

May 5, 2010 By

Trees and other plants help keep the planet cool, but rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are turning down this global air conditioner. According to a new study by researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science, in some regions more than a quarter of the warming from increased carbon dioxide is due to its direct impact on vegetation. This warming is in addition to carbon dioxide’s better-known effect as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. For scientists trying to predict global climate change in the coming century, the study underscores the importance of including plants in their climate models.

“Plants have a very complex and diverse influence on the climate system,” says study co-author Ken Caldeira of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology. “Plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but they also have other effects, such as changing the amount of evaporation from the land surface. It’s impossible to make good climate predictions without taking all of these factors into account.”

Plants give off water through tiny pores in their leaves, a process called evapotranspiration that cools the plant, just as perspiration cools our bodies. On a hot day, a tree can release tens of gallons of water into the air, acting as a natural air conditioner for its surroundings. The plants absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis through the same pores (called stomata). But when carbon dioxide levels are high, the leaf pores shrink. This causes less water to be released, diminishing the tree’s cooling power.

The warming effects of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas have been known for a long time, says Caldeira. But he and fellow Carnegie scientist Long Cao were concerned that it is not as widely recognized that carbon dioxide also warms our planet by its direct effects on plants. Previous work by Carnegie’s Chris Field and Joe Berry had indicated that the effects were important. “There is no longer any doubt that carbon dioxide decreases evaporative cooling by plants and that this decreased cooling adds to global warming,” says Cao. “This effect would cause significant warming even if carbon dioxide were not a greenhouse gas.”

In their model, the researchers doubled the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and recorded the magnitude and geographic pattern of warming from different factors. They found that, averaged over the entire globe, the evapotranspiration effects of plants account for 16% of warming of the land surface, with greenhouse effects accounting for the rest. But in some regions, such as parts of North America and eastern Asia, it can be more than 25% of the total warming. “If we think of a doubling of carbon dioxide as causing about four degrees of warming, in many places three of those degrees are coming from the effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and one is coming from the direct effect of carbon dioxide on plants.”

The researchers also found that their model predicted that high carbon dioxide will increase the runoff from the land surface in most areas, because more water from precipitation bypasses the plant cooling system and flows directly to rivers and streams. Earlier models based on greenhouse effects of carbon dioxide had also predicted higher runoff, but the new research predicts that changes in evapotranspiration due to high carbon dioxide could have an even stronger impact on water resources than those models predict.

“These results really show that how plants respond to carbon dioxide is very important for making good climate predictions,” says Caldeira. “So if we want to improve climate predictions, we need to improve the representation of land plants in the climate models. More broadly, it shows that the kind of vegetation that’s on the surface of our planet and what that vegetation is doing is very important in determining our climate. We need to take great care in considering what kind of changes we make to forests and other ecosystems, because they are likely to have important climate consequences.”

The study is published in the May 3-7 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. redOrbit

Filed Under: Biotechnology, Environment Tagged With:

The Buzz Over Coconut Water

May 4, 2010 By

Coconut water is making a splash in the beverage market, promoted by manufacturers and fans as the healthy way to hydrate.

“It’s an exciting category right now,” says Arthur Gallego, spokesman for Vita Coco, which recently got an endorsement from pop singer Madonna.

Coconut water — the liquid found in green, i.e. young, coconuts — has been popular in tropical countries ever since someone figured out how to crack that nut. And it has been available in packaged form in ethnic markets and natural food stores for some time in the United States.

But now it is showing up in mainstream supermarkets, packaged in juice-box style packages and coming in an array of flavors, such as peach-mango and tangerine.

“What is incredible to see is that the consumption of coconut water has trickled down from the natural food stores to the mainstream,” says Rodrigo Veloso, founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based O.N.E., One Natural Experience, makers of O.N.E. Coconut Water.

Veloso’s company is bringing out O.N.E. Active, which sports fewer calories than its regular coconut water and adds ginkgo biloba, ginseng and catuaba. It comes in three flavors, including lemon-lime.

Yes, it is true. They are putting the lime in the coconut.

Already, coconut water has created some big-name buzz.

Besides Madonna, Matthew McConaughey and Demi Moore recently invested in Vita Coco, which was founded in 2004 and saw sales jump from about $4 million in 2007 to $20 million in 2009, according to Gallego. Meanwhile, Pepsi has invested in O.N.E. A third company in the market is Zico, founded in 2004.

While coconut water sales are growing, in the $40 million to $60 million range annually, they remain a drop in the bucket compared to billion-dollar drink brands like Red Bull, says Jeffrey Klineman, editor of Bevnet.com, an online review about nonalcoholic beverages.

“It’s definitely got people excited, but we don’t know how big it will be when it reaches the plateau,” Klineman says. “The question is, is it a nine-figure plateau or a billion-dollar plateau? Whether they become part of the beverage firmament is still not really settled.”

Fans of coconut water praise it for being relatively low calorie, natural and packed with important nutrients. An 11.2-ounce serving of Vita Coco contains almost 700 milligrams of potassium, more than a banana.

That is a good thing for Americans, who are fruit-and-veggie-shy and often do not get enough potassium, says Andrea Giancoli, registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. At about 60 calories for an 11-ounce serving of plain coconut water, a little more for the flavored versions, the drink delivers good nutritional value. Still, not that many people exercise with the intensity that requires more than plain water for rehydration and some are not exercising at all, she points out.

“It’s perfectly fine to incorporate into part of your diet if you’re balancing out the rest of your diet, but I wouldn’t believe all the hype,” she says. “We live in this world where we’re always trying to find the answer to health and the answer to weight. It still takes good old-fashioned exercise and healthy eating.”

LeAnn Locher, a communications consultant in Portland, Ore., sees coconut water as a way to get the benefits of hydration “without all the sugar,” that can come with other drinks. By Michelle Locke, The Miami Herald

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Olive Oil May Help Protect Against Ulcerative Colitis

May 3, 2010 By

Olive oil may help prevent ulcerative colitis, according to a new study co-ordinated by medical researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Presented at the Digestive Disease Week conference in New Orleans, the findings show that people with a diet rich in oleic acid – which is present in olive oil -are far less likely to develop ulcerative colitis.

Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fatty acid found in olive oil, peanut oil and grapeseed oil, as well as in butter and certain margarines.

The researchers, led by Dr Andrew Hart of UEA’s School of Medicine, studied more than 25,000 people aged 40-65 living in Norfolk, UK. The volunteers were recruited to the EPIC study (European Prospective Investigation into Diet and Cancer) between 1993 and 1997. The participants, none of whom had ulcerative colitis at the outset, completed detailed food diaries which were later analysed by specially trained nutritionists working in Cambridge.

By 2004, 22 participants in the study had developed ulcerative colitis and the researchers compared their diets with those who did not develop the disease. They found that those with the highest intake of oleic acid had a 90% lower risk of developing the disease.

“Oleic acid seems to help prevent the development of ulcerative colitis by blocking chemicals in the bowel that aggravate the inflammation found in this illness,” said Dr Hart.

“We estimate that around half of the cases of ulcerative colitis could be prevented if larger amounts of oleic acid were consumed. Two-to-three tablespoons of olive oil per day would have a protective effect,” said Dr Hart.

Ulcerative colitis is characterized by inflammation of the lining of the colon or large bowel, which causes abdominal pain, diarrhoea and weight loss. DNA India

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The Amazing Aphid

May 2, 2010 By

These insect pests pioneered new frontiers in genetics

Contrary to popular belief, aphids are not just sap-sucking, plant-destroying enemies of agriculture. In fact, these pests are genetic pioneers that evolved two unique traits, according to a study that appears in the April 30 issue of the journal Science.

First, aphids are, so far, the only animal known to produce essential pigments known as carotenoids. The aphid’s pigment-producing ability is unique to the animal kingdom. Other animals, including humans, that need carotenoids cannot produce these essentials themselves; instead, they must obtain carotenoids from food.

Why are carotenoids needed by many plants and animals? Because they provide vital support to varied functions, ranging from promoting immunity to reducing cell damage and providing color to fruits and vegetables. For example, carotenoids give tomatoes their red color and flamingoes their pink color. Carotenoids also determine whether aphids are red or green–a color distinction that influences their vulnerability to predators and other threats.

As for the second unique trait, aphids probably acquired their carotenoid-producing ability through a rare, and perhaps unique, process: millions of years ago, aphids apparently “snatched” carotenoid-producing genes from a carotenoid-producing member of the fungi kingdom, and then snapped those snatched genes into their own genetic code.

Gene transfer between organisms is not itself a rare phenomenon. However, the fungi-to-aphid gene transfer is the only known gene transfer between members of the fungi kingdom and animal kingdom–which are so evolutionarily distant from one another that it was long thought that never the twain would genetically meet.

But by busting through kingdom barriers, aphids gained something akin to a “genetic magic wand” that empowered them to produce their own carotenoids. They were thereby freed of the need to scavenge for carotenoid-yielding foods. The result: one less chore on the aphid’s “to do” list, and a new self-sufficiency for these insects.

No one knows what compelled genes to jump from fungi to aphids. But “the transferred fungi genes may have originated from a closely associated fungus, such as one of the fungi that causes diseases in aphids,” says Nancy Moran of the University of Arizona, the lead author of the Science paper. “Because the carotenoid-producing genes were the only fungus-related genes that we found in the aphid genes, we think that the fungi-to-aphid transfer was an extremely rare event.”

“This is a very big discovery,” says Matt Kane of the National Science Foundation. “By recognizing the horizontal transfer of nutritionally important carotenoid genes, Nancy Moran and her colleagues are the first to discover that gene transfer can occur between very distantly related groups of higher, multi-cellular organisms such as fungi and insects.”

The foundation for the discovery of the fungi-to-aphid gene transfer was laid when a research team that included Moran constructed the first map of the entire genetic code of aphids. Then, when follow-up studies of the aphid’s genetic map were conducted by a different research led by Moran, the presence of carotenoid-producing genes was discovered.

Because a few cases of bacterium-to-animal gene transfer are known and because aphids have close associations with bacterial symbionts, bacteria were initially considered a more likely suspect for genetic swapping with aphids than were the more genetically complex fungi. But after identifying signature similarities between the sequences and arrangements of the aphid and fungi carotenoid-producing genes, Moran’s team was able to eliminate bacteria, as well as laboratory contamination, as potential sources for the aphids’ carotenoid-producing genes. redOrbit

Filed Under: Biotechnology Tagged With:

Expand Your Skill

May 1, 2010 By

As in any industry, many individuals want to recession-proof their jobs. But which are the best types of jobs to have? Well, different sources will tell you different things. However, if you are still looking for a job there are a few high paying jobs where employers are looking for some good people get their businesses going again. Remember that although these opportunities may not be something you want to do for the rest of your life, they could help you expand your skill set and provide better opportunities once you’ll get back into your preferred field of work. So, take a look, and think about it. And by then, think if any of those jobs can make you more profitable to your future employer.

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