YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

I dipped into the medical file this week and discovered some good news and bad news about the food we all eat. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

Are you constantly craving McDonalds? Twinkies? Potato chips? Well a new research report suggests there’s someone you can blame. Your mother. The findings of the study suggest that pregnant mothers who eat high sugar and high fat diets have babies who are likely to become junk food junkies themselves. This happens because the high fat and high sugar diet changes the fetal brain’s reward pathways which changes food preferences.

The researchers studied two groups of pregnant rats that were fed either standard "rat chow" or a junk food diet made up of a selection of common human foods high in fat and high in sugar. After the baby rats were weaned, the pups from both groups were allowed to select their own diets from either the same range of junk food or standard rat chow. The researchers also measured the levels of "feel good" chemicals (dopamine and opioids) and the receptors acted on by these chemicals.

The scientists found that the rats whose mothers ate the junk food diet had higher levels of opioid receptors after they were weaned. This group also chose to eat more fatty foods as compared to the pups whose mothers ate the standard rat chow. This suggests that babies whose mothers eat excessive amounts of high-fat, high-sugar junk foods when pregnant or breastfeeding are likely to have a greater preference for these foods later in life.

Not only does this research help explain the ever-increasing rate of human obesity, it may also explain why some people easily resist fatty and sugary foods, while others seem hopelessly addicted.

It’s ironic somehow that the same mother who nagged you to eat your fruits and veggies may have caused your preference for junk food. I hope this convinces all you pregnant women who read this to go heavier on the green vegetables and a little lighter on the ice cream and Twinkies!

And in the light of junk food, recent research has found that there’s a vast difference in the health of the types of meat you eat. If given the choice between eating a hot dog or enjoying some BBQ chicken, consider the hot dog.

That’s because hot dogs, as well as pepperoni and deli meats, are relatively free of carcinogenic compounds but it’s a not a happy ending for bacon and rotisserie chicken — especially chicken skin — because both have higher levels of cancerous material.

The researchers studied ready-to-eat meat products to determine their levels of heterocyclic amines, or HCAs. These carcinogenic compounds are found in meat that’s fried, grilled or cooked at high temperatures. Studies have shown that humans who consume large amounts of HCAs have increased risk of stomach, colon and breast cancers.

The study focused on eight types of ready-to-eat meat products: beef hot dogs, beef-pork-turkey hot dogs, deli roast beef, deli ham, deli turkey, fully cooked bacon, pepperoni and rotisserie chicken. The researchers heated up the hot dogs and bacon in a microwave, cooked the pepperoni on a pizza either in the oven or a microwave and used the chicken and deli meat as obtained. After doing so, they studied the meat to determine whether it contained five different types of HCAs.

Pepperoni had the least HCA content, followed by hot dogs and deli meat. Fully cooked bacon and the rotisserie chicken contained all five types of HCAs. Rotisserie chicken skin had significantly higher HCA levels, with eight times as much as the other products. That’s because chicken skin contains more fat and protein and less moisture, and HCA levels tend to increase as moisture decreases.

So, you want a healthier life for you and your children? Stop eating so much junk food and stop eating chicken skin!

News from your Planetarium

By Pam Eastlick

Greetings All,

Although I must admit that as I type this, the prospects are not looking good, we do have a chance of seeing a very nice close conjunction of Mercury, Venus and the crescent Moon in the western sky tonight (Friday,

28 October). And though it’s totally overcast as I type this, the sky was gloriously clear when I went to get the paper this morning!

There won’t be any smiley faces tonight because the very thin crescent Moon will be to the left of Venus and above Mercury. You’ll be able to tell the planets apart because Venus will be awesomely bright. Mercury will be below Venus and slightly to the left.

Sunset tonight will be at 5:56 p.m. so start watching the pretty colors about 6:15 p.m. when the two planets and the Moon will still be 10 degrees above the western horizon. Venus, Mercury and the Moon will form a triangle and they’ll all be about two degrees apart. Should be a spectacular sight. Hope for a cloud free western horizon!

I’m making great progress on next month’s Legends show. I’ll tell you all about it in the ‘official’ post next week. Happy planet hunting!!

THROUGH A GLASS CLEARLY

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings! Well, I thought we’d dip into the technology file today. We haven’t been there for a while and there’s actually some good news.

Although it isn’t the dangerous problem it can be in the temperate zones in winter, it’s still a hassle when your glasses fog up when you go from an air-conditioned building into Guam’s humid air. And if you aren’t lucky enough to have AC in your car, your windshield can fog up dangerously when it’s raining hard and you can’t roll down the windows.

So news from the Universite Laval in France is welcome indeed. Researchers there have published news of an innovation that could eliminate the fog on eyeglasses, windshields, goggles, camera lenses, and any other transparent glass or plastic surface. Fog forms on a surface when water vapor in the air condenses in fine droplets. It’s not a continuous film and a good anti-fog coating should prevent the formation of such droplets.

The researchers use polyvinyl alcohol, a hydrophilic (water-loving) compound that allows water to spread uniformly. The challenge is to firmly attach the compound to the glass or plastic surface. To accomplish this, researchers constructed a layered base and then added the anti-fog compound. The result is a thin, transparent, multilayered coating that doesn’t alter the optical properties of the surface. In addition, the chemical bonds that join the different layers ensure the hardness and durability of the entire coating.

Two patents already protect this invention, which has numerous potential applications, including vehicle windshields, camera lenses, binoculars and corrective lenses. Negotiations are already underway with a major eyewear company interested in obtaining a license for this technology.

Foggy glass. A new innovation could eliminate, once and for all, the fog on eyeglasses, windshields, goggles, camera lenses, and on any transparent glass or plastic surface. (Credit: iStockphoto/Chepko Danil)

Well, I’m certainly all for this innovation! It’s a real pain to walk outside and have everything go blurry! And now for some new technology that that could have an impact locally.

Your next new car hopefully won’t be a lemon, but it could be a pineapple or a banana. That’s because Brazilian scientists are using fibers from these plants to make new plastics for cars that are stronger, lighter, and more eco-friendly than plastics now in use.

The scientists are using these plants to produce "nano" cellulose fibers, so tiny that 50,000 could fit inside across the width of a single strand of human hair. Like fibers made from glass, carbon, and other materials, nano-cellulose fibers can be added to raw material used to make plastics, producing reinforced plastics that are stronger and more durable.

The researchers are using pineapple stems and leaves, banana leaves, coconut shell fiber, cattails, and sisal fibers produced from the agave plant. To prepare the nano-fibers, the scientists insert the plant material into a device like a pressure cooker. Then they add just the right chemicals and heat the mixture over several cycles, to produce a fine material that resembles talcum powder. The process is costly, but just one pound of nano-cellulose produces 100 pounds of super-strong, lightweight plastic.

The new plastics are very strong but much lighter than traditional plastics. The researchers believe that many car parts like dashboards, bumpers and side panels will be made of nano-sized fruit fibers in the future. They’ll reduce a car’s weight and that improves fuel economy.

Clear glasses and cars made from locally grown plants. Sounds good to me!

GOOD MEDS

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

After two weeks of global warming news I decided it was time to delve into the medical file. And since the global warming news is pretty dismal, I decided to feature some good news for a change.

Having a nice tan is always a beauty plus. But too much sun exposure carries a terrible price; skin cancer. Now, new research from England says that you can get that marvelous healthy tan without all that ultraviolet. All you have to do is . . . eat your vegetables?

Dr. Ian Stephen from the University of Nottingham and his team discovered that people who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables every day have a more golden skin color, thanks to substances called carotenoids. Carotenoids are responsible for the red coloring in fruit and vegetables like carrots and tomatoes, and are important for our immune and reproductive systems.

The researchers also discovered that when people were given the choice between the skin color caused by tanning and the skin color caused by carotenoids they preferred the color produced by carotenoids.

While the research of this particular study was conducted using Caucasian subjects, the paper also describes a study that suggests the effect may exist cross culturally, since similar preferences for skin color were found in an African population.

So if you want your skin to have an attractive color, don’t lie out in the sun, eat a healthy diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables.

The face in the middle shows the woman’s natural color. The face on the left shows the effect of sun tanning, while the face on the right shows the effect of eating more carotenoids. Participants thought the carotenoid color looked healthier. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Nottingham)

And now a story that has profound implications for all of us and I can only hope it’s true.

Researchers at Stony Brook University have developed a powerful new painkiller that (so far) has no apparent side effects or addictive qualities. And this painkiller interacts with the body in a way that’s totally unlike any other painkiller in use today.

When a patient is given an opiate like morphine, the pain signals are still transmitted to the brain. The morphine alters how the brain perceives the pain but opiates also impair judgment and lead to drug dependence. This was brought home to me years ago when I sprained my ankle. I don’t remember what they gave me, but my leg still hurt dreadfully. I just didn’t care anymore.

The Stony Brook professors identified a sodium ion channel that’s involved in the transmission of pain and then produced a drug that blocks that specific channel. When this channel is blocked, the pain signals aren’t transmitted, even by the sensory nerves. And since the central nervous system is taken out of the equation, there are no side effects and no addictive qualities.

The potential for such a drug is enormous — the reduction or elimination of pain for patients with cancer, arthritis, migraine headaches, muscle pain, pain from burns, and pain from other debilitating diseases.

Drugs that block this channel in both pill and ointment forms are currently in Phase II clinical trials in England and Canada. The Research Foundation of the State University of New York is the holder of the various patents originating from the work of the Stony Brook researchers. Icagen Inc., now in partnership with Pfizer, holds the exclusive license to these patents and has announced their own drug has now entered Phase I clinical trials in the U.S.

Pain is important and we experience it for a reason. But once it’s told us there’s a problem, it’s time for it to make a quiet exit. Here’s hoping this really works!

HOT AND DRY

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

I thought we’d continue our discussion of global warming this week with a couple of new stories. Some of you may have seen the first item on the news feeds although there wasn’t a whole lot of attention paid to it as far as I could see. In addition to an ozone hole forming over the warming Arctic, the region experienced its second largest ice loss in history last summer.

According to a NASA press release, satellite data show that the sea ice cover in the Arctic narrowly avoided surpassing the record low set in 2007. The near-record ice-melt followed higher-than-average summer temperatures, but without the unusual weather conditions that contributed to the extreme melt of 2007. The release said that older, thicker ice is melting faster than the new ice that forms each winter which jeopardizes the entire ice cover.

This summer’s low ice extent continued the downward trend seen over the last 30 years, which scientists attribute largely to warming temperatures caused by climate change. Data show that Arctic sea ice has been declining both in extent and thickness. Since 1979, September Arctic sea ice extent has declined by 12 percent per decade. Climate models have suggested that the Arctic could lose almost all of its summer ice cover by 2100, but in recent years, ice extent has declined faster than the models predicted.

So . . . the ice is melting, but it turns out that’s not all that’s going on. The human-created pollution that’s causing ozone holes to develop, is also causing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to rise. Rising CO₂ levels are the main cause of the general warming trend. But new research shows that although rising CO₂ levels are causing one kind of hole to develop, they’re causing another kind to disappear.

Most of us learned in grade school science that we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide and that plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. It’s a win-win situation.

But researchers in Indiana and the Netherlands have recently shown that as carbon dioxide levels have risen during the last 150 years, the density of pores that allow plants to breathe has dwindled by 34 percent. Hey, if there’s lots more CO₂ out there, you don’t need as many holes to take it in. Unfortunately, fewer holes also means less water release.

The scientists gathered their data from many different plant species in Florida, and they included living plants and samples taken from herbarium collections and peat formations that were 100 to 150 years old.

Plant pores are called stomata and the CO₂ increase has had a profound effect on the number and size of stomata found on the plant leaves the scientists examined. This has caused a huge reduction in the release of water to the atmosphere. It’s well known that long-lived plants like trees can seasonally adjust their number of stomata depending on growing conditions, but little is known about the long-term structural changes in stomata number or size over periods of decades or centuries.

The authors conclude that a doubling of today’s carbon dioxide levels — from 390 parts per million to 800 ppm — will halve the amount of water lost to the air. They conclude that plant adaptation to rising CO₂ is currently altering the hydrological cycle and climate and will continue to do so throughout this century.

So . . . rising temperatures AND less water. Looks like the desert is coming to planet Earth!

Stomata are structures that allow plants to exchange gases with the air. Contemporary plants in Florida have fewer stomata than their ancestors did a few decades ago. (Credit: Emmy Lammertsma)