We started off discussing the value of consumerism to even the most devout naturalists with In Praise Of Consumerism - It Appeals To The Thoreau In You and then discussed the materialistic greed of nature herself in In Praise Of Consumerism - Bees, Bacteria And The Value Of Wasted Time. Now now we're going to wrap things up by suggesting that consumerism is not the root of all evil. In fact, we’re going to propose the opposite.

Consumerism is responsible for some of the most important events in Western civilization. Consumerism has produced empowerments that have radically upgraded the lives of even the poorest people on the planet. And consumerism has even advanced the grand ambition of biomassto kidnap, seduce, and dragoon as many iinanimate atoms as possible into the 3.85-billion-year-old enterprise of life.

We left off last time with a not-so-simple question; what does consumerism do for human beings? To answer that, let me show you how spirit spun into material goods lifts other spirits down the line.

The traders of Venice in 1270 AD were motivated by sheer consumerist lust. They were driven by the hunger of Europe’s rich to do what bower birds and stags do - show off luxuries rarer than those of their neighbors.

The son of a wealthy trading family, a family powered by consumer lust, would change history and our vision of nearly everything we see. He was financed and set into motion by the luxury consumer goods industry. But he left behind a seed of spirit that, like Jack’s magic bean turned to a giant stalk, would put the Western World on a heady climb.

What he planted in the Western mind would uplift the spiritual ruminations of Thoreau and his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, plus your spiritual aspirations and mine.

Throughout the overlooked depths of Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes, a small but important animal is rapidly disappearing.

Until recently, the animal - a shrimplike, energy-dense creature called Diporeia - was a major food source for commercially important species like lake whitefish and many prey fish upon which salmon, trout and walleye rely.

Scientists are employing new research methods in a quest to explain their population freefall, which threatens to negatively affect the Lakes' ecosystems and $4 billion sport fishing industry, said Purdue University researcher Marisol Sepúlveda.

Would you like a side of food poisoning with that salad?

Salmonella can infect plant cells and successfully evade all the defense mechanisms of plants so cleaning the surfaces of raw fruits and vegetables, e.g. by washing, is not sufficient to protect against food poisoning, according to a study published today.

The results of the project are based on a model plant, which also represents the ideal basis for future development work on treatment and testing systems in the area of food safety.

1.5 billion (!) cases of food poisoning are caused by Salmonella bacteria each year (World Health Organisation). If the bacteria survive particularly well in a person, they can even infect intestinal cells and persist for longer. Previously, the only known sources of infection were infected meat products and plants that had come into contact with contaminated water.

Amyloid deposits in tissues and organs are linked to a number of diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, type II diabetes, and prion diseases such as BSE. However, amyloids are not just pathological substances; they have potential as a nanomaterials.

Amyloid fibrils are bundles of highly ordered protein filaments made of ladder-like strands and can be several micrometers long.

In cross-section, amyloids appear as hollow cylinders or ribbons. Although amyloid fibrils are proteins, they more closely resemble synthetic polymers (plastics) than the usual globular proteins. Amyloids can display amazing mechanical properties similar to spider silk. Spider silk is, by weight, significantly stronger than steel and can be stretched to many times its original length without tearing — properties that have not been reproducible with synthetic fibers.

Lusi, the world’s fastest-growing mud volcano, is collapsing and could subside to depths of more than 140 meters with consequences for the surrounding environment, according to new research.

As the second anniversary (May 29) of the eruption on the Indonesian island of Java approaches, scientists have also found that the center of the volcano is collapsing by up to three meters overnight.

Such sudden collapses could be the beginning of a caldera - a large basin-shaped volcanic depression - according to the research team, from Durham University UK, and the Institute of Technology Bandung, in Indonesia.

Dozens of studies show collagen repair is possible and demonstrate why three types of available skin treatments, topical retinoic acid, carbon dioxide laser resurfacing and injections of cross-linked hyaluronic acid, are effective.

University of Michigan scientists draw on dozens of studies since the early 1990s to explain why these treatments all improve the skin’s appearance – and its ability to resist bruises and tears – by stimulating new collagen. Collagen is a key supporting substance, plentiful in young skin, that’s produced in the sub-surface layer of skin known as the dermis. The findings show that the breakdown of the dermis’ firm, youthful structure is a very important factor in skin aging – a much more straightforward thing to fix than genetic factors that others theorize may be involved.

“Fibroblasts are not genetically shot,” says John J. Voorhees, M.D., F.R.C.P., chair of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Michigan Medical School and the article’s senior author. Fibroblast cells in the skin are the key producers of collagen.

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have taken some important first steps to creating a synthetic copycat of a living cell.

Dr Cameron Alexander and PhD student George Pasparakis in the have used polymers — long-chain molecules — to construct capsule-like structures that have properties mimicking the surfaces of a real cell.

In work published as a 'VIP paper' in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, they show how in the laboratory they have been able to encourage the capsules to 'talk' to natural bacteria cells and transfer molecular information.

Charlotte Eklund-Jonsson at the Department of Food Science, Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden says the results of her doctoral dissertation could be a new vegetarian food that boosts the uptake of iron and offers a good set of proteins.

The food, called tempe, is a whole-grain product with high folate content. It is generally accepted in medicine that whole-grains reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, and it is also believed that it protects against age-related diabetes and certain forms of cancer.

You went to a wedding yesterday. The service was beautiful, the food and drink flowed and there was dancing all night. But people tell you that you are in hospital, that you have been in hospital for weeks, and that you didn’t go to a wedding yesterday at all.

The experience of false memories like this following neurological damage is known as confabulation. The reasons why patients experience false memories such as these has largely remained a mystery. Now a new study conducted by Dr Martha Turner and colleagues at University College London, published in the May 2008 issue of Cortex offers some clues as to what might be going on.

The authors studied 50 patients who had damage to different parts of the brain, and found that those who confabulated all shared damage to the inferior medial prefrontal cortex, a region in the centre of the front part of the brain just behind the eyes.

The world's first optical pacemaker is described in an article published today in Optics Express. A team of scientists at Osaka University in Japan show that powerful, but very short, laser pulses can help control the beating of heart muscle cells.

"If you put a large amount of laser power through these cells over a very short time period, you get a huge response," says Nicholas Smith, who led the research. The laser pulses cause the release of calcium ions within the cells, Smith explains, and this action forces the cells to contract.

This technique provides a tool for controlling heart muscle cells in the laboratory, a breakthrough that may help scientists better understand the mechanism of heart muscle contraction.