Wednesday, May 22, 2013


1.       Eating More Protein is Associated with More Weight Loss
By: Editor

There has been a recent study that proves that when on a diet, increasing your protein intake will help you lose weight as it helps people control their appetites and their calorie intake. It is recommended that the person on the diet has about a 30% protein intake of everything they eat each day. Protein should be eaten daily as it is a major component to growing strong bones and it is important for building immunity against pathogens. Women are to eat 46 grams a day and men are to eat 56 grams a day to maintain healthy eating habits. 

1.       Vitamin C and Gout
By: Andy Soos
  



Vitamin C is an essential nutrient for humans as it is an antioxidant and can treat or prevent scurvy. However, the lack of this nutrient could cause various issues and then supplements are necessary. It has been believed that Vitamin C will reduce uric acid, or gout, but in a recent study this has been proven incorrect. It has been proven that taking Vitamin C supplements does not lower or effect uric acid levels in the body. The American College of Rheumatology journal, Arthritis and Rheumatism decided that the amount of supplement the patient may take depends on their habits. Such as the average healthy adult will need less Vitamin C that a pregnant woman or someone who smokes. They’ve also learned that taking too much Vitamin C can cause diarrhea in healthy adults.

1.       Eat Those White Potatoes?
By: Allison Winter



In this article, the author states that most produce rich in color contain nutrient packed pigments provide energy and benefit our bodies. We are supposed to have three to five fruits and vegetables daily. According to a new study, potatoes and other white vegetables are important in a healthy diet as they obtain lots of nutrients just like other vegetables. The color of the vegetable does not identify the amount of nutrients the vegetable obtains. In the United States, the vegetable intake is very low as it is almost half of what it should be. We should all eat more vegetables, but we should also consider how we cook them. Do not coat them in lots of oils and coatings when cooking them. 

1.       Great Lakes Losing Water, Climate Change a Significant
By: Eric Justian




http://www.enn.com/climate/article/46006

In this article, it’s talking about the Great Lakes and how they are a record 26 inches lower than normal. This causes higher prices in iron, ore, grain, and coal. For every inch that the water drops 100 tons have to be left behind on the dock because the freighter cannot carry them all. Over 160 million tons of good are carried on the Great Lakes per year which controls a lot of our industrial trading. When the freights cannot carry all of the cargo and have to leave some behind, the cost rises on the product because it has to wait to be delivered which causes the price that the consumer pays go up also. Human induced climate change is the main problem in this situation. The Great Lakes are evaporating at a fast rate and it has lost 71 percent of their ice cover since 1973.

Blog Part II


1.       Eat Insects to Mitigate Deforestation and Climate Change
By: Jeremy Hance
 

In this article, eating bugs has become a way of life. 2 billion people in the world eat over 1,900 species of bugs according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). These bugs are being eaten because they are protein rich, helped environmental degradation, and climate change. Entomophagy, or insect eating, seems to be a solution to various environmental issues. Some solutions are eating insects, farming insects, turning insects into feed for livestock. Right now, insects are eaten directly from the wild or raised in small cottages but it’s spreading worldwide. Insects are not harmful to eat are nutritious and contain a lot of protein. 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013


After SARS: A New Virus in Saudi Arabia Underscores the Need to Police Disease in Animals
By: Bryan Walsh
In 2003, there was a coronavirus spreading that began in Hong Kong. This virus was very dangerous as it spread rapidly and had no cure. This virus spread rapidly as people took trips on airplanes, taxis, and rode trains. It was passed from human to human easily, but where did it really come from? It was later proven that this SARS disease was from a bat. This is very important because some animals expose many humans to diseases that could kill them. Right now in Saudi Arabia, there is a new pathogen that is very similar to the SARS virus. At least 15 people have been infected and more than have of those people died. Some methods I would choose to fix these problems is to quarantine the patients when there is a new strand of disease until more about the disease is found and until there is a known cure. This could only fail if the person dies before it can be found but it also keeps others from being exposed to this disease. I think that this is very scary because I think about the number of people I interact with and the number of things I touch daily and how many diseases are being passed along. 

http://science.time.com/2013/03/19/after-sars-a-new-virus-in-saudi-arabia-underscores-the-need-to-police-disease-in-animals/

Traffic: Why It's Time to Get Serious About the Bloody Illegal Wildlife Trade


Traffic: Why It’s Time to Get Serious About the Bloody Illegal Wildlife Trade
by: Bryan Walsh
Hunted animals are used as various resources throughout the world. Some use body parts to create medicines and others simply cook and eat the animals. Poaching is hunting animals illegally and beginning to become a huge issue. There are animals being hunted to extinction because humans believe that they “need” these resources. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is working very hard to save these endangered species. They work very hard to protect different species of animals. They encourage various lawmakers to change how much can be hunted to lower the amount of animals being hunted. Between 1973 and 2012, the CITES affected the population of the white rhino in Africa from 2,000 to 19,000. Some things that can change poaching as a whole is lawmakers creating stricter laws and investigating these laws also. I think that it is very sad to see animals almost wiped out as a whole because of humans’ greediness. Sometimes we don’t realize that just because they can’t protect themselves from us doesn’t mean we can just kill them and take what they had.
http://science.time.com/2013/03/05/traffic-why-its-time-to-get-serious-about-the-bloody-illegal-wildlife-trade/ 

Tipsy Fish: When Anti- Anxiety Meds Get Into Rivers


Tipsy Fish: When Anti-Anxiety Meds Get Into RiversBy: Veronique GreenwoodIn the United States, the majority of our population takes multiple types of medications. Yes, we may be the ones taking them but sometimes they affect our animals. Sometimes the medicines we take can kill animals, cripple them, or prevent reproducing. So Swedish scientists ran an experiment the test what some of the medications we take do to some animals. They used the drug oxazepam, which was discovered in the water before. They tested the drug on three different groups of perch. On the first group of perch they used no drugs, the second group of perch they used 6 times more concentration of the drug, and the last group had 500 times more concentration. They trapped the fish into boxes and opened a small door and when releasing the fish observed how long it took the fish to venture into it. The fish with more concentration moved rapidly while the one’s with less concentration moved slowly. This shows that our medicines effect animals just as it does us. It’s very dangerous for these fishes to swim in these so one way we could fix this problem is by using filtering systems. Filtering the water will keep these things away from the fishes and will keep them safe. Some barriers for this solution could be paying for the filtering systems or the filtering systems not working effectively. I think that everything that can be done to keep these animals safe and alive needs to be done, no matter how much money it costs.  

http://science.time.com/2013/02/15/tipsy-fish-when-anti-anxiety-meds-get-into-rivers/