Cheers!

In an interesting article I stumbled across on Discovery, I learned that beer can be good for cancer. Don't run out to the bar just yet, though. It is a special beer created by scientists at Rice University. They have dubbed the beer BioBeer (hardly marketable if you ask me) and what they have done is spliced three genes in the yeast used by brew masters and made the yeast form resveratrol as a byproduct. If you don't recall, resveratrol is found in grape juice and red wine and is believed to aid in all kinds of age related illnesses based on various studies. The red wine news story is more popular than grape juice, however, because deep down inside we always want a better excuse to indulge.



The sad part of the news is many of the students responsible for the findings cannot appreciate the fruits of their labor as they are not yet old enough to drink. Oh the irony. The scientists and brew masters involved don't know yet if they can put a beneficial amount of resveratrol in the beer as of yet. Who knows though? The old toast of "to your health" seems to becoming more and more true these days.


Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Read more...

Olive Oil For Your Health

In an article posted earlier today on ScienceDaily, it was revealed that there are anti-cancer components to olive oil. According to the article, good quality olive oil contains "phytochemicals" which can kill off cancer cells. The research was done to determine if Mediterranean diets were the reason breast cancer rates were lower in the region. Researchers were from the Catalan Institute of Oncology and the University of Grenada in Spain. It was found that Extra Virgin Olive Oil is best for these "phytochemicals" as the oil is extracted from pressed olives. No heat is involved therefore leaving the chemicals in tact. The oil was tested on cultured breast cancer cells and really worked; however, no testing has been done on humans and the researchers are uncertain of how it would work since the human body is more than a few cancerous cells.


In other good olive oil related science, it is just good for you. Olives have great fatty acids and good cholesterol too! Pair this with some wine high in resveratrol (and good at determining climate change) and you have one heart healthy snacking opportunity. I love food and science so this is perfect! Doesn't Alton Brown have the best job? A food scientist! Nice.

Photo is licensed under Creative Commons to Grace on Flickr.

Read more...

News Snippets: Grapes, Ginger, Beetles and Butterflies

Three snippets that I found interesting today follow: two are about food and one about butterflies. The second one also has to do with beetles. Woo, invertebrates! Could my day get any better?

• Grapes made the news again. Well, actually, resveratrol did. I have posted about this interesting compound a few times on Potspoon! and I am still waiting on the reveratrol beer. Well, besides the fact that this compound is good for its anti-aging properties, it also appears to display anti-obesity and anti-insulin resistance. You can read the article here. 

Fig 1. Yum

•  In an article published in Insect Conservation and Diversity, good news was found for the UK's incredible stag beetle and good news come in the form of a root. Ginger is useful in the kitchen, sure, but it is also useful as bait to lure stag beetles. Researchers have also devised a method using tiny microphones to hear larvae underground. This all helps determine numbers of the rare beetle and can aid in its conservation. You can read more on ScienceDaily as well.

Fig. 2 Not the right species of butterfly, but a butterfly nonetheless

• Squinting bush brown butterflies, Bicyclus anynana, seem to have a bit of role reversal in mating behaviors. This confusion only seems to occur when changes of weather happen. When it's cool, females act as the aggressors and flash their wing patterns. In this species the males and females have the same eye spots, but the UV patterns change dependent on temperature. In warm moist conditions, the males have more flashy designs while the females are dull, but when the temperature drops, new males and females are opposite. It's the females that are flashier and spend time displaying. You can read more here.

 Hope you all are having an awesome Monday!

Photos: Grapes from Google Creative Commons search and butterfly from Paraflyer's photostream. Both lisenced through Creative Commons.

Read more...

"Wine" About Climate Change

Wine is a beautiful thing when you stop to think about it. The complexities of flavors and bouquets are caused by a microbiological process. There are tannins in wine which do all sorts of silly things to proteins. Besides all the beautiful science, however, there is the flavor, the smell, the how-it-makes-you-feel of wine that we all love. Well, this wine lover just found another reason to appreciate this lovely grape libation!

In the wine's alcohol, there is a "footprint" of the amount of fossil-fuel derived carbon dioxide in the air above the vineyard! Since this is very accurate and there are so many vineyards, this is a better source of information about how much CO2 we are putting out. The CO2 reading stations are few and far between, but grapes are grown around the world. That, coupled with the fact that so many bottles are kept for so long, we have a record of fossil-fuel based CO2 dating back many years.

Not only is wine good for you because of the resveratrol, but it is a great map of the fossil fuel usage! So handy. Just don't drink any tiger wine. Not good. Wine from grapes. Good.

You can find the source article here.

Cheers!

Read more...