Charlie Rose with John F. Burns of the NYT

Charlie Rose speaks with John F. Burns of The New York Times, just returned from Iraq (24 January 2007). Mr. Burns discusses the current conditions in-country and possibilities for the future. A great listen if you’d like a first-hand account of the situation in Iraq amidst the daily barrage of headlines.

Digital Book Index

From digitalbookindex.org

“Over the last decade, a quiet revolution has been going on in the development of a large library of “digital” or “electronic” books. While there are still large gaps, a very substantial body of “Western” thought is available in the form of downloadable or on-line books. Most major writers, from Plato to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Proust, or John Le Carré, are accessible on the Internet. Subjects range from the highly scholarly to the contemporary and popular — especially as more commercial publishers discover the virtues of “on-line” distribution. This index is intended as a “Meta-index” for most major eBook sites, along with thousands of smaller specialized sites. In some subject categories, the resources you find here are more comprehensive than those of all but the largest of research libraries, due to the budget & space constraints of smaller institutions. Digital Book Index provides links to more than 130,000 title records from more than 1800 and non-commercial publishers, universities, and various private sites. About 90,000 of these books, texts, and documents are available free, while many others are available at very modest cost.”

You may look thin and be too fat

Research highlighting the danger of fat around vital organs could change the way we tackle obesity. Professor Jimmy Bell, a molecular imaging expert, and a team of researchers have recently discovered that, in fact, an outwardly trim person can carry a higher proportion of dangerous hidden fat than an overweight one, if that fat is around vital organs. The team has used a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner at Hammersmith Hospital in London to map the fat distribution of 600 volunteers. Their results suggest that up to four in 10 people could be “tofi” – thin outside, fat inside.

Previous research has shown someone with a lot of internal fat around the liver, gut, heart and pancreas, or streaked through under-used muscles, has a higher risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers than someone with high levels of external fat. “Traditional ways of measuring body fat, such as BMI, give people the wrong idea about how much fat they have, as it says nothing about internal storage. People become obsessed by dieting, but doing this without exercise means they may be putting down fat in the wrong places. We want to get away from that and focus on maximising the health benefits of physical activity without dramatic lifestyle changes.”

Simon Relph, a marketing art director from Sydenham, London, and Neil Ferguson, 23, a marketing designer from Bexley Village, Kent, provide a good example of why our current methods of evaluating weight-related health risks are so flawed. Simon, 41, has a BMI of 27.7, but admits to not doing much exercise. His MRI scan shows he is carrying 15 litres of internal fat. His colleague Neil, 23, has a BMI of 28.1. Yet he plays football three to four times a week and goes to the gym regularly. He admits to “love handles” around his waist, but has only four litres of internal fat.

The researchers believe our current view of the relationship between diet, physical activity and health is far too simplistic. This is where the so-called intervention studies being carried out by Prof Bell’s team come in. Groups of individuals will be put through 16-week programmes of exercise of different intensities and frequencies. Their progress will be accurately measured with MRI scans, and compared with control groups. The ultimate objective is to be able to provide far more accurate advice on how someone should exercise, based on their gender, ethnicity and genetic make-up.

JazzTube

JazzTube powered by YouTube, hundreds of great jazz performances in one place.

Sampled by Daft Punk

A collection of samples used by Daft Punk (primarily in their Discovery album).

Breakwater – “Release The Beast” used in “Robot Rock”
Edwin Birdsong -”Cola Bottle Baby” used in “Harder Better Faster Stronger”
The Imperials – “Can You Imagine” used in “Crescendolls”
Eddie Johns – “More Spell On You” used in “One More Time”
George Duke – “I Love You More” used in “Digital Love”
Oliver Cheatham – “Get Down Saturday Night” used in “Voyager”
Tata Vega – “Get It Up For Love” used in “Da Funk”
Jerry Goldsmith – “The Rec Room” used in “Around The World”
Karen Young – “Hot Shot” used in “Indo Silver Club”
Barry Manilow – “Who’s Been Sleeping In My Bed” used in “Superheroes”
Sister Sledge – “Il Macquillage Lady” used in “Aerodynamic”
ELO – “Evil Woman” used in “Face to Face”
Cerrone – “Supernature” used in “Verdis Quo”

From http://palmsout.blogspot.com

Take Your Vitamin

Even with the best dietary intentions, we often fall short of meeting all our nutritional needs. One answer is a daily multivitamin, which is safe, effective, and can go a long way toward correcting any nutritional deficiencies. Of course, the ideal way to get your nutrients is still from food. Food not only supplies vitamins and minerals, but also gives us fiber and a host of other healthy compounds, like phytochemicals and antioxidants, that interact with each other in ways that supplements can’t. The scientific community used to believe that a varied, healthful diet would provide all the vitamins and minerals we need. But recent surveys show that most American diets fall short of satisfying the minimum daily requirements for several vitamins and minerals. Researchers have concluded that a single daily multivitamin/mineral pill may be the answer for achieving optimum health and preventing chronic diseases.

Approximately 40% of Americans take supplements, according to the third U.S. National Health Examination Survey. And the most popular supplement is the multivitamin. One important point: a daily multivitamin supplements your diet; it’s not intended to correct a bad diet. The benefit of a daily multi is that it can make up for minor deficiencies in your diet that could eventually help lead to chronic disease. In fact, a study published in the August 2003 Journal of Nutrition found that men and women who took multivitamins significantly reduced their risk for a first heart attack. The body needs roughly 40 vitamins and minerals each day for good health, and it’s not always easy to get all of those from food. Taking a daily multivitamin certainly won’t hurt, even if your diet is already chock full of vitamins and minerals. ~ Kathleen Zelman, MPH, RD, LD

A Tribute to the Bald Eagle

A musical montage celebrating America’s national bird. Magical.

Know Your Cuts of Meat

8 Primal Cuts of Beef (+ Shank)

• Chuck — common source for hamburger
• Rib — short ribs, rib eye steak.
• Short Loin — porterhouse steaks, filet mignon, the most tender cuts
• Sirloin — less tender than short loin, but more flavorful
• Round – lean cut, and is moderately tough
• Brisket — think barbeque beef brisket.
• Plate – flavorful, but tough, think fajitas
• Flank – think London Broil
• Shank — used primarily for stews and soups, toughest of the cuts

FDA Approves Non-Prescription Diet Pill

Washington Post: Dieters got a new tool Wednesday to help them take off the extra pounds _ the first government-approved nonprescription diet pill. The Food and Drug Administration said the fat-blocking weight-loss pill orlistat, which has been available by prescription, can be sold in a reduced-strength version over the counter. The drug is intended for people 18 and older to use along with a reduced-calorie, low-fat diet and exercise. “Using this drug alone is unlikely to be beneficial,” Ganley said at a telebriefing.

While some dietary supplements make weight-loss claims, Ganley said this is the first nonprescription drug approved by the agency for that purpose. Ganley said in trials, for every five pounds people lost through diet and exercise, those using orlistat lost an additional two to three pounds. When taken with meals, orlistat blocks the absorption of about one-quarter of any fat consumed. That fat _ about 150 to 200 calories worth _ is passed out of the body in stools, which can be loose as a result. About half of patients in trials experienced gastrointestinal side effects.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori)

Helicobacter pylori is a bacterium that infects the mucus lining of the stomach and duodenum. During my undergraduate research, our sister lab was working to characterize the flagella of this little guy. We discussed H. Pylori in my Cell Bio course last week, and given its importance, I thought this was an imporant bacteria for all to know about.

Distilled from Wikipedia and Lecture Notes: Found in up to 50% of the world’s population, making it the most common infectious disease worldwide, a main cause of peptic ulcers and stomach cancer. H. pylori is an unusual bacteria — the only known bacteria that can cause cancer and one of the only bacteria that can survive in the acidic environment of the stomach. The corkscrew-shaped bacteria drills itself into the stomach lining and, while nourishing itself, reduces the stomach’s ability to produce acid. This often leads to pepticulcers, non-Hodgkins lymphoma of the stomach and gastricadenocarcinoma. Now usually can be eradicated with a combination of proton pump inhibitors and antibiotics.

In their original paper, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall (Australians who studied the bug) contended that most stomach ulcers and gastritis were caused by colonization with this bacterium, not by stress or spicy food as had been assumed before. The medical community was slow to recognize the role of this bacterium in stomach ulcers and gastritis, believing that no bacterium could survive for long in the acidic environment of the stomach. The community began to come around after further studies were done, including one in which Marshall drank a Petri dish of H. pylori, developed gastritis, and the bacteria were recovered from his stomach lining, thereby satisfying three out of the four Koch’s postulates.

Infection may be symptomatic or asymptomatic (without visible ill effects). It is estimated that up to 70% of infection is asymptomatic. The bacteria have been isolated from feces, saliva and dental plaque of infected patients, which suggests gastro-oral or fecal-oral as possible transmission routes. Infection rates vary from nation to nation – the West (Western Europe, North America, Australasia) having rates around 25% and much higher in the Third World. In the latter, it is common, probably due to poor sanitary conditions, to find infections in children. In the United States, infection is primarily in the older generations and the poorest. This is largely attributed to higher hygiene standards and widespread use of antibiotics. However, antibiotic resistance is appearing in H. pylori . It is widely believed that in the absence of treatment, H. pylori infection–once established in its gastric niche–persists for life.