Helth News

Tomatoes’ tasteless green gene

 

The tomatoes your great-grandparents ate probably tasted little like the ones you eat today. The fruit used to have more flavor. A lot more flavor. In fact, tomatoes “were once so flavorful that you could take one in your hand and eat it straight away just like we regularly eat apples or peaches,” according to plant scientist Alan Bennett. He belongs to a team of international scientists who now think they know one reason why the fruit has lost so much flavor.
Although some unripe tomatoes have a dark green patch near the stem, farmers prefer that their unripe tomatoes are the same shade of green all over. The consistent coloring makes it easier for them to know when the fruit should be picked.
But tomatoes without the dark green patch are also missing an important genetic ingredient that helps the fruit make more sugar and other tasty molecules. So by breeding tomatoes for that consistent color, Bennett’s team says, crop scientists may have accidentally contributed to also making this fruit bland
 “It is a good illustration of unintended consequences,” Harry Klee told Science News. Klee studies tomato flavor at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Tomatoes make sugars in compartments called chloroplasts. Bennett, who works at the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues found that tomatoes need the correct version of a particular gene (one called SlGLK2) to form chloroplasts properly in the fruit. A gene acts as a biological instruction book that tells cells which molecules to make.
Tomatoes without the dark green tinge have the wrong version of this gene, the researchers report in the June 29 issue of Science. As these fruit ripen, they can’t make as many chloroplasts. And chloroplasts that they do produce are smaller. One result: The tomatoes make less sugar — and don’t taste as good.
 Tomatoes also produce gases responsible for some of the odors we associate with the fruit. Even though you only breathe them, these gases affect the way that you perceive flavor. Tomatoes with weak chloroplasts can’t make as much of these gases, further reducing flavor.
But the newfound gene change is “not the whole story of why modern tomatoes are so bad, by a long shot,” Klee told Science News. Tomatoes also taste blander when they are picked too early or stored in the fridge.

 Meet the new meat.

 

 

On August 15, two food tasters joined a chef and a scientist on a stage in London before a live TV audience. Asked to rate a hamburger, they sniffed, tasted, then chewed bits of the meat. Afterward, they gave this burger — yes, the one burger they shared — a thumbs-up. In the mouth, it felt like normal ground meat, they said. And though its taste was less than ideal, they concluded that the patty certainly resembled ground beef. Such comments actually constituted high praise. The reason: This was no ordinary beef.
Conventional beef is muscle tissue harvested from a slaughtered cow. But no animal gave its life for this meat. Instead, scientists at Maastricht University in the Netherlands spent the last five years fine-tuning methods to grow muscle tissue in a dish. Mark Post, the lead scientist behind the new burger, refers to his culinary creation as “cultured beef.”
Post’s team started with stem cells. These special cells multiply rapidly and can differentiate into nearly any type of cell. Post harvested his starting cells from a cow. Using a needle, he removed some muscle stem cells from a living cow. (These cells ordinarily replace lost or damaged muscle tissue to help an animal heal.) In the lab, Post fed those cells so that they would multiply, producing millions more muscle cells.
Over time, these cells can be formed into strips. But they’re small. The scientists needed 20,000 strips to create just one patty. Then, to make it better resemble ground beef, they added bread crumbs for texture and beet juice for coloring.
Hanni Rützler was one of the two people invited to sample the cultured burger. She thoughtfully sniffed and chewed her bite. “There is quite some intense taste, and it’s close to meat,” concluded this nutrition scientist, based in Vienna, Austria. She added, however, “It’s not that juicy.” The other taster, American food journalist Josh Schonwald, similarly concluded that the burger came close to the real thing.

Such an assessment was “more positive than I expected,” Post told Science News for Kids. “We had tasted it before and found it to be satisfying, but not yet perfect.” The tasters’ response gave him some ideas for how to improve the recipe, he added.
Wonder what it tastes like now? Get ready for a long wait. Computer scientist Sergey Brin, who cofounded Google, funded Post’s work on cultured beef. Post’s quest for the first lab-grown burger came with a hefty price tag — more than $300,000. But the lone burger it yielded was worth it, Brin said in a video that aired with the burger tasting.
As weird as lab-grown meat may sound, he and physiologists like Post see its development as one way to plan for the future. A 2011 United Nations study predicted a dramatic increase in the worldwide demand for meat in the next 40 years. But raising animals like cows will require using large swaths of land and devoting enormous quantities of crops to feed the animals. In addition, those animals produce methane — a colorless greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
Cultured beef may meet the growing worldwide demand for meat without raising and slaughtering livestock, explains Post.
The August 15 demonstration showed the technology exists. But don’t go looking for cultured beef in the supermarket just yet. Post says scientists still need to design new technologies to mass-produce and process the meat. But they’re off to a good start, and Post says he hopes that within 20 years, cultured beef will be affordable and widely available.
And maybe enticing. After the televised event, more than 60 percent of polled viewers in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands said they’d be willing to try cultured beef.
“Some people think this is science fiction.” Brin says. “I actually think that’s a good thing.” He argues: “If what you’re doing is not seen by some people as science fiction, it’s probably not transformative enough.”

 

 Sleep therapy for fears

Sleep doesn’t just recharge the body’s batteries. It also may give the brain a chance to vanquish painful memories. A new study finds that while dozing, people can lessen their fears. The trick: getting that shut-eye in a room that carries a scent linked with those fears.
“It’s a remarkable finding,” Edward Pace-Schott told Science News. A sleep neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, he was not involved in the new work. Neuroscientists study the brain and nervous system.
Katherina Hauner and Jay Gottfried of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, recruited 15 volunteers. The scientists showed the participants photos of a man’s face. At the same time, they smelled a particular scent (such as that of lemons) and received a small electric shock. They repeated this experience several times over half an hour. It left the recruits fearing the face and the scent — because both were linked to the painful shock. One way scientists measured this fear: The volunteers sweated more.
Afterward, the scientists had each recruit fall asleep in the lab. While the people were in the deepest stage of sleep, the researchers delivered the fearful smell. Upon waking, these volunteers showed less fear when encountering the once-frightening face and smell.
Sleep alone did not erase the fear. The smell delivered during sleep was important. The scientists know that because they trained the volunteers to also fear a different face/smell combo. But the researchers didn’t deliver that odor to volunteers while they slept. And afterward, they found that face just as scary as before.
Brain scans showed that sleep-scent training altered parts of the brain involved with memories and emotions. The Northwestern scientists and their coworkers published all of these findings September 22 in Nature Neuroscience.
The new sleep-scent treatment resembles something known as exposure therapy, Hauner told Science News. In exposure therapy, a person confronts a fear over and over. (A person with a fear of spiders may interact with spiders, eventually even learning to touch them. This therapy continues until new, safe memories replace the fearful ones.)
As such, the new findings suggest that sleep-scent therapy may be able to boost the success of treatment for disorders like phobias. Phobias are extreme or irrational fears. (Arachnophobia, for example, is the fear of spiders.) The new sleep treatment may also lessen deep-seated fears in people with post-traumatic stress disorder. People with this condition suffer severe mental or emotional stress after an injury or shock.

Ayurveda - The world Life

 

 Ayurveda is the most ancient and traditional system of medicine in India. The Ayurvedic system of medication is based on many centuries of experience in medical practice, handed down through generations. Ayurvedic medicine originated in the early civilizations of India some 3,000-5,000 years ago making Ayurvedic medicine the oldest surviving healing system in the world

  The preventive and remedial measures derived under Ayur veda deal with multidimensional complexities and problems of human life and provide solutions in perfect harmony with Nature. It is therefore most relevant and promising towards achieving total health in the present times as well.

The following series of articles on health tips from Ayur veda gives the excerpts most relevant in today's context from such scriptures for our ready-reference. If we could adopt even a fraction of these in our daily life , lot of our time and money would be saved from running around the clinics and dispensaries in our hectic and stress-inducing schedules.

Following 8 articles are the tips covering holistic health . 

Health Tips: Guidelines from Ayurveda-I (Morning Routine)  

Ayur veda lays special emphasis on prevention of diseases and disorders and takes scientific consideration of every aspect of daily routine in this regard. This article we will elucidated a brief background of Ayurvedic medical concepts and described the successive steps of morning routine . The major steps included Best timings and mode of getting up Atmabodha Sadhana , Ushapana, Shauca  and Dantadhavana.. . 

Health Tips: Guidelines from Ayurveda - II (Daily Routine)

Now we proceed further in this sequence and discuss about Abhyang (oil massage), Kshaurkarma(shaving), physical exercise, morning walk, bathing and suitable type and mode of wearing clothes. At a first glance, one might doubt as to what could be scientific about such routine chores. But reading the views of the rishis in Ayurvedic scriptures tells us how deeply and comprehensively they had looked at every aspect of health vis-a-vis our physical organism and environment . 

Health Tips- Guidelines from Ayurveda-III (Science of Healthy Life)

The last two articles dealt with health -promoting activities of daily routine . Before we proceed further in the sequence, let us look at the noble purpose of the founders of Ayur veda to realize the majestic strength and grandeur of knowledge this science of health y life holds in its roots. The great rishis the devoted seekers of God , the scientists of ultimate knowledge, the true followers of eternal religion had developed Ayur veda for pure altruistic purpose (of human welfare) and not for any materialistic gain. Today's scenario is just the opposite

 Health Tips: Guidelines from Ayurveda V (The science of leading a long, happy and healthful life)
While discussing with rishi Punarvasu the author of "Charak Samhita", some vaidyas (Ayurvedic doctors) raised the query "Koruka?" (Meaning: "who does not fall ill?"). Somebody said " one who eats chyavanprash every morning". "Who takes lavan bhaskar and triphala regularly" said some others; eating chandravati every day was described by another vaidya as the source of health . Finally the fundamental principle of natural maintenance of good health was expressed by Vagbhatt as "Hitbhuka, Mitbhuka, Ritbhuka". Hitbhuk: means

 Health Tips: Guidelines from Ayurveda VI (Spiritual Effects of Food)
For most of us, food is meant to be only for satisfying hunger and nourishing the body. However, as per Vedic Scriptures, what we eat and drink significantly, though subliminally, affect our subtle and astral bodies as well. For instance, the Chhandogya Upanishad says� "Aharashuddhau Sattvashuddhih..."  Meaning: Purity of food helps in purifying the inner self. Purification of the inner self and hence of the mind and intellect, accelerates elimination of illusions and ignorance.

 Health Tips: Guidelines from Ayurveda VII (Ideal Routine)
This article we shall focus upon what should be the ideal routine since evening till early morning (called ratricharya). The following shlokas provide guidelines on the major aspects and activities pertaining to the ratricharya including late evening routine , going to bed, sleep, dream, disciplines of chastity, etc. Wise men and women avoid the following five activities during the first of the four phases of night eating, sleeping, general reading or studying, sexual activities, and roving away from the house.

 Health Tips: Guidelines from Ayurveda-VIII (Health tips for Sleep) 
Here we highlight some more health tips especially those pertaining to sleep. Cleanliness of nightdress or the clothes worn while going to the bed is also emphasized in Ayur veda . One should preferably avoid wearing the same clothes, which one has been wearing during the day. The clothes on the body should be loose while sleeping. The bed should be neat and tidy; the sheets covering the body and the bed should also be clean. According to the adepts of Ayur veda , the mattresses and bed-sheets should be made up of cotton. Use of foam, sponge, nylon etc for long is harmful. As far as possible, one should develop the habit of sleeping on a thin mattress; only a mat with bed-sheet should be enough in the summer..

 Health Tips: Guidelines from Ayurveda-IX (Prevention and Cure by Diet Restraints)
Ayurvedic treatment emphasizes more on fasting and diet restraint rather than on consuming medicines to fight out the diseases. Ayur veda asserts that half the disease is cured simply by appropriate diet control. As the principles of diagnostics and therapeutics under Ayur veda are based on the identification of the level of tridoshas vata, pitta and kapha, so are the disciplines of fasting and diet. Let us first look at the recommended diet for the maintenance of generally good health . Followed by this are some common guidelines for major classes of diseases and disorders due to the three doshas. What is generally recommended as good or edible?