It appears the folks at the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee have been frequenting Poppa's Cottage, and taking our advice to heart (so to speak). Their new guidelines have finally eased some of the former restrictions on fat and cholesterol, and have more harshly implicated simple carbs and sugar (a.k.a. yayo) in our growing (literally) health... Continue Reading →
Irrational Actors
As mentioned in a recent post, we mostly-hairless apes are genetically sucky actors when it comes to economics. In many ways, we display similar irrational behavior to our relatives the capuchin monkeys. Capuchins, like us, don't want to give up something we already have, even for more than we would be willing to pay for... Continue Reading →
Getting More Cows
"War, unh, Good god, y'all, What is it good for?" Well, apparently we have an answer to that question now. War is good for getting more cows, which is of course good for getting more women, which is essential to maxing out how many babies you sire. And from a woman's perspective, hooking up with... Continue Reading →
Microbe vs. Microbe
In this Mini Post, two of our favorite subjects, microbes and dirt, come together. In a new report, researchers were able to extract a powerful new antibiotic from a bacteria found in the soil. Teixobactin is made by the soil bacteria Eleftheria terrae. The researchers are excited because they feel the way this antibiotic works... Continue Reading →
A Fallible Mind
I think of memories as a continuous complex chemical cycle in which neurons relay information from an event to one another. Over time, the cycle fades, sometimes disappearing completely. When we recall an event, new neural connections are made, and the cycle is refreshed, but details may be missing or have even changed - what... Continue Reading →
Shocking News
Some scientists get to have a lot of fun. "Hey, let's do an experiment where we get to shock people - there are endless possibilities here. Oh, and maybe we'll learn some stuff." These scientists determined that people would sacrifice a certain amount of pay not to be shocked (no surprise there), but they would sacrifice... Continue Reading →
More Poop News
I committed a double homicide this week. Two of the little suckers in one trap, the promise of some yummy peanut butter just millimeters away. We tried to give them every opportunity to avail themselves of the no-kill traps, but after one of their brethren found himself so incarcerated (he was later released at the... Continue Reading →
Organizing Life
Linnaeus probably couldn't have guessed that we would one day be able to classify organisms by sequencing and comparing large chunks of their genomes (since he didn't know what a genome was). That's what phylogenomics does, and it's leading to rapid advances in our understanding of how life evolved. In the late '90s, my dad... Continue Reading →
Antibiotic Profligacy
According to this Science blurb, American children are prescribed antibiotics 57% of the time for respiratory infections, which are only 27% bacterial, resulting in 11 million unwarranted antibiotic prescriptions each year. This is increasing antibiotic resistance and, the article fails to mention, wreaking unnecessary havoc with our good microbes.
Flu Bugs
Not to be too much of a grotesque, but even flu vaccines are affected by our gut microbiota. Science reports that certain bacteria in the gut increase the efficacy of the flu vaccine. Keep those guts healthy!
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