Laboratory Equipment

How can blue whales, the largest animals on the planet, survive by feeding on krill, shrimp-like creatures that are the size of a penny? According to UCLA life scientists, it’s all a matter of dimensions.

In findings published in the journal Nature, the researchers demonstrate for the first time that the relationship between animals’ body size and their feeding rate — the overall amount of food they consume per unit of time — is largely determined by the properties of the space in which they search for their food.

An animal searching for food in a three-dimensional space, like the ocean or sky, is likely to consume much more than a similarly sized animal searching in a flat, two-dimensional space, like a savannah or a sea bed, they found.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Environment-Plays-Role-in-Animals-Body-Size-Feeding-Rates-060112.aspx

As illustrated by the E. coli outbreak in Germany in 2011, any delay in identifying the source of food poisoning outbreaks can cost lives and cause considerable political and economical damage. An international multidisciplinary team of scientists have shown that difficulties in finding the sources of contamination behind food poisoning cases are inevitable due to the increasing complexity of a global food traffic network where food products are constantly crossing country borders, generating a worldwide network.

As consumers we are used to seeing country of origin labels on certain foods, but what about on products with more than one ingredient? A recent study by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland showed that 53 countries contributed to the ingredients of a dish of chicken kiev in a Dublin restaurant. This diversity of sources is partly to blame for the failure to identify the sources of food poisoning outbreaks, and has lead to calls for international health agencies to initiate a system to monitor this “human food web.” But just how complex is the human food web? What is its structure, can we quantify it, and what can we learn from it?

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Tracing-Food-Poisoning-is-Harder-with-Globalization-060112.aspx

Researchers at Oregon State Univ. have made some fundamental discoveries about how people taste, smell and detect flavor, and why they love some foods much more than others. The findings could lead to the Holy Grail of nutrition – helping people learn to really like vegetables.

As an evolutionary survival mechanism, humans are wired to prefer sweet-tasting foods and avoid bitter substances. In the distant past, that helped us avoid poison and find food that provided energy. Now, it just makes us fat.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Find-on-Taste-Smell-Could-Improve-Diet-060112.aspx

An omega-3 fatty acid found in fish, known as DHA, prevented age-related vision loss in lab tests, according to recent medical research from the Univ. of Alberta. Yves Sauvé, a researcher in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, and his team discovered that lab models fed DHA did not accumulate a toxic molecule at the back of the eyes. The toxin normally builds up in the retina with age and causes vision loss.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Fish-Oil-May-Prevent-Age-Related-Vision-Loss-060112.aspx

Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have developed a prototype system that uses advanced imaging technology and a robotic cutting arm to automatically debone chicken and other poultry products.

The Intelligent Cutting and Deboning System employs a 3D vision system that determines where to cut a particular bird. The device automatically performs precision cuts that optimize yield, while also greatly reducing the risk of bone fragments in the finished product. “Each bird is unique in its size and shape,” says Gary McMurray, chief of GTRI’s Food Processing Technology Division. “So we have developed the sensing and actuation needed to allow an automated deboning system to adapt to the individual bird, as opposed to forcing the bird to conform to the machine.”

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Robot-Uses-Imaging-Sensors-to-Debone-Poultry-060112.aspx

Stevia is regarded as a healthy alternative to sugar. Yet there are drawbacks to the stevia products recently approved as sweeteners by the European Union. One of these is a long-lasting bitter after-taste. Scientists at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke (DIfE) have now identified the receptors on the human tongue mediating the bitter sensation. The work has been published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

The human tongue has just one receptor type for detecting sweetness but about 25 different ones for bitter flavors. Scientists at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke (DIfE) have now identified the two receptors, hTAS2R4 and hTAS2R14, that detect the bitter after taste of stevia.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Receptors-Find-Sweetener-to-be-Bitter-060112.aspx

Cutting the amount people drink to just over half a unit a day could save 4,600 lives a year in England alone, according to a modeling study by researchers published in the journal BMJ Open. Half a unit of alcohol is as little as a quarter of a glass of wine, or a quarter of a pint. That’s much lower than current British government recommendations of between 3 to 4 units a day for men and 2–3 units for women.

The researchers set out to find the optimum daily amount of alcohol that would see fewest deaths across England from a whole range of diseases connected to drink. Previous studies have often looked at the separate effects of alcohol on heart disease, liver disease or cancers in isolation.

“Although there is good evidence that moderate alcohol consumption protects against heart disease, when all of the chronic disease risks are balanced against each other, the optimal consumption level is much lower than many people believe,” says lead author Melanie Nichols of the BHF Health Promotion Research Group in the Department of Public Health at Oxford Univ.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Half-a-Unit-of-Alcohol-a-Day-is-Best-060112.aspx

One idea for fighting global warming is to increase the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, scattering incoming solar energy away from the Earth’s surface. But scientists theorize that this solar geoengineering could have a side effect of whitening the sky during the day. New research from Carnegie’s Ben Kravitz and Ken Caldeira indicates that blocking 2 percent of the sun’s light would make the sky three-to-five times brighter, as well as whiter. Their work is published today, June 1, in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas have been increasing over the past decades, causing the Earth to get hotter and hotter. Large volcanic eruptions cool the planet by creating lots of small particles in the stratosphere, but the particles fall out within a couple of years, and the planet heats back up. The idea behind solar geoengineering is to constantly replenish a layer of small particles in the stratosphere, mimicking this volcanic aftermath and scattering sunlight back to space.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Aerosols-Could-Help-Fight-Global-Warming-060112.aspx