You may know that correlation studies have shown that the risk of becoming obese is 2.5 times higher for those who have double copies of the best known risk gene for being overweight or obese, the FTO gene (fat mass and obesity associated).

New discoveries of that sort have led to a resurgence in concern that we may be slaves to our genes, but is that the case?  No, in every study obesity still required high calorie consumption, especially fat.   A low fat diet neutralizes the harmful effects of the gene.

The smell of 'death' that repels insects turns out to be a truly ancient signal for avoiding disease or predators, says David Rollo, professor of biology at McMaster University in the journal Evolutionary Biology.

What do the death stench of corpses of from insects to crustaceans all have in common?   A blend of specific fatty acids. 

Because insects and crustaceans diverged more than 400-million years ago it is likely that most subsequent species recognize their dead in a similar way, that the origin of such signals was likely even older, and that such behavior initially occurred in aquatic environments (few crustaceans are terrestrial). 

Older people have noticed their thinner arms and legs and perhaps you have as well.   It's no secret muscle is harder to maintain, much less build, as we age but science was unclear exactly why.    

A team of researchers the University of Nottingham Schools of Graduate Entry Medicine and Biomedical Sciences say that the suppression of muscle breakdown, which also happens during feeding, is blunted with age. 

Muscle mass is important because a loss of muscle which decreases strength and increases the likelihood of falls and fractures - and a 'double whammy' affects people aged over 65.  But weight training may 'rejuvenate' muscle blood flow and help retain muscle for older people.

Michael Cosmopoulos was raised in Athens but has been in St. Louis since 2001.  Yet his heart and his science never left Greece.   Since 1999, he has been working at a site in Pylos and he recently came across a real-life palace dating back to the time of the Trojan War.

The Trojan War is just a story, of course (though if you don't think so, which figure from Homer's historical work do you think I am?)(1) but historians debate what kernels of truth may be in there.
 

Vegetable oils can be chemically reacted with an alcohol (methanol is the usual choice) to produce chemical compounds known as esters. Biodiesel is the name given to these esters when they are intended for use as fuel.

The Voynich Manuscript Part 9 : An Amateur's Work?

The other day I went to a talk about the fall and revival of metaphysics, given by Sebastian Kolodziejczyk at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Metaphysics these days has a bad reputation, even among philosophers, so I was aware of its 'fall' but I was rather curious about the possibility of a 'revival'.

I love it! As soon as I start whining about how humans are always exploiting resources without checking first for sustainability, along comes a story to prove me wrong.

The Giant Pacific Octopus or GPO, who lives throughout the Pacific Northwest (if terrestrial terms) or Northeast (in oceanic terms), has never been the target of a federally managed commercial fishery. But occasionally people murmur about it, and some clever folks have decided that we'd better know a bit more about octopus biology before such a fishery (octopussery?) comes on the scene.

(This continues a discussion of the topic I started here, in Spanish, and in §5.4 of this published paper, in English. Not necessary to read those first; this blog stands on its own.)

There are many definitions of sustainability.

What is your yardstick for climate change? Really, how do you relate climate response to human CO2 emissions?

A new yardstick is proposed by Damon Matthews, a professor in Concordia University’s Department of Geography, Planning and the Environment. With colleagues from Victoria and the U.K., Matthews used a combination of global climate models and historical climate data to derive a simple linear relationship between total cumulative emissions and global temperature change.