It's Alive! Probiotics Are Growing for Food Processors
submitted by Garth Hogan on July 30, 2011
Source:www.foodprocessing.com
You need bugs.
Specifically, your body needs the friendly microbes that perform a number of symbiotic functions, without which you'd be dead.
Having taken on the less off-putting epithet of "probiotics" -- versus "microbes," "friendly bacteria" or "beneficial micro-organisms" -- the critters under this modern sobriquet number in the scores of species.
All display — some were specifically developed to display — special health benefits.
According to the World Health Organization and other health groups, probiotics are defined as "live microorganisms which, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host."
Originally, they were used for relief of such unmentionable symptoms as diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome or colitis, as well as bringing calcium and vitamin D into the diets of persons with lactose intolerance or sensitivity.
Scientists added to the bacterial benefits list protection from harmful bacteria overgrowth, cancers of the gastrointestinal tract and high cholesterol.
Exploding Bacteria, Self-Fertilizing Bugs and Other Cool Critters
submitted by Garth Hogan on July 30, 2011
Source: ecocentric.blogs.time.com
No matter how jaded you become, there is always room to be awed by the little shimmers of magic nature deals us on a regular basis.
There's something just plain cool about a world that offers up coral shaped like organ pipes, peppermint shrimp, and monkeys feasting on fermented leaves.
A handful of unrelated studies this week added a few more life forms to Earth's roster of biological weirdness.
The smallest — but easily the most dramatic — of the new critters are the suicide-bomber bacteria discovered by researchers at the University of Oxford and ETH Zürich (think Switzerland's MIT) and reported in a paper in The American Naturalist.
Known by the misleadingly unremarkable name Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the little bugs have a nasty habit of blowing themselves up and releasing a spray of toxins when too many of their fellow Pseudomonas aeruginosa are in the vicinity.
The detonation kills some of the bystanders and reduces competition for food among the survivors.
