A new randomized, controlled trial suggests that eating walnuts everyday as part of a healthful diet could improve gut health and protect the heart.
Category: food – Page 237
Probiotics: What they are and how you might benefit from them
Probiotics are live microorganisms, usually bacteria, that can be consumed to offer health benefits.
The ability of certain microbes to confer health benefits on their host was recognized more than 100 years ago. In 1904, Elie Metchnikoff, a scientist at the Pasteur Institute, claimed that Bulgarian peasants lived longer by eating yogurt made from bacteria that served to ferment the milk. Parisians rushed out to buy yogurt in response.
However, the huge variety of bacteria living on the planet was not appreciated back then. More recently, the development of technology that identifies organisms from their DNA has allowed scientists to show that plants, animals, insects and humans can be hosts for many different types of microorganisms.
How smartphone apps changed the way people live in China
Fast forward 10 years and Li’s life has completely changed. No longer in finance, he communicates via WeChat and uses apps on his iPhone XS to order food, hail taxis, pay bills, and shop.
Most of the apps that permeate the daily life of Li and hundreds of millions of other Chinese had their beginnings at the start of the decade.
The 2010s will be remembered as the decade when smartphone apps became ubiquitous, spawning new Chinese tech giants whose platforms forever changed the way people live.
How 3D Printing, Vertical Farming, and Materials Science Are Overhauling Food
Within the next 10 years, what we eat and how it’s grown will be fundamentally transformed.
And converging exponential technologies—from materials science to AI-driven digital agriculture—are not slowing down. Today’s breakthroughs will soon allow our planet to boost its food production by nearly 70 percent, using a fraction of the real estate and resources, to feed 9 billion by mid-century.
What you consume, how it was grown, and how it will end up in your stomach will all ride the wave of converging exponentials, revolutionizing the most basic of human needs.
[Note: This article is an excerpt from my next book The Future Is Faster Than You Think, co-authored with Steven Kotler, to be released January 28th, 2020.]
Printing Food
Are bats to blame for China’s virus?
Zoonotic diseases may become the source of more outbreaks in the future. People must take note and pass the appropriate regulations to prevent future outbreaks.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/01/22/996315/are-bats-to-blame-for-chinas-virus#
As bats and humans cross paths more viruses are making the jump from bat to people. China’s latest scare is the latest coronavirus to affect humans likely to have its origins in bats.
The outbreak of a brand new virus in China has put humans’ relationship with bats under the spotlight again.
As the human population grows, so too are our interactions with bats, either through people and domestic animals sharing bat habitats, or increased hunting of bats for meat.
Global patterns in coronavirus diversity
Study reveals interplay of an African bat, a parasite and a virus
Since the emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrom Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) it has become increasingly clear that bats are important reservoirs of CoVs. Despite this, only 6% of all CoV sequences in GenBank are from bats. The remaining 94% largely consist of known pathogens of public health or agricultural significance, indicating that current research effort is heavily biased towards describing known diseases rather than the ‘pre-emergent’ diversity in bats. Our study addresses this critical gap, and focuses on resource poor countries where the risk of zoonotic emergence is believed to be highest. We surveyed the diversity of CoVs in multiple host taxa from twenty countries to explore the factors driving viral diversity at a global scale. We identified sequences representing 100 discrete phylogenetic clusters, ninety-one of which were found in bats, and used ecological and epidemiologic analyses to show that patterns of CoV diversity correlate with those of bat diversity. This cements bats as the major evolutionary reservoirs and ecological drivers of CoV diversity. Co-phylogenetic reconciliation analysis was also used to show that host switching has contributed to CoV evolution, and a preliminary analysis suggests that regional variation exists in the dynamics of this process. Overall our study represents a model for exploring global viral diversity and advances our fundamental understanding of CoV biodiversity and the potential risk factors associated with zoonotic emergence.
