For Perfect Blood Pressure
- Good: Bananas
- Better: Fresh figs
To Protect Your Heart and Fight Disease
- Good: Red grapes
- Better: Lychee
For Beautiful Skin
- Good: Orange
- Better: Guava
To Lower Cholesterol
- Good: Apples
- Better: Asian pears
To Fight Cancer
- Good: Watermelon
- Better: Papaya
Source: Health.msn.com
April 30, 2008
April 29, 2008
April 28, 2008
GM crops on trial: Technological development as a real-world experiment
Through the European controversy over agricultural biotechnology, genetically modified (GM) crops have been evaluated for an increasingly wide range of potential effects. As the experimental phase has been extended into commercial practices, the terms for product approval have become more negotiable and contentious. To analyse the regulatory conflicts, this paper links three theoretical perspectives: issue-framing, agri-environmental discourses, and technological development as a real-world experiment.
Agri-biotechnological risks have been framed by contending discourses, which attribute moral meanings to the agricultural environment. Agri-biotech proponents have emphasised eco-efficiency benefits, which can remedy past environmental damage, while critics have framed ‘uncontrollable risks’ in successively broader ways through ominous metaphors of environmental catastrophe. Regulatory authorities have translated those metaphors into measurable biophysical effects. They anticipate and design commercial use as a ‘real-world experiment’, by assigning greater moral-legal responsibility to agro-industrial operators who handle GM products.
Expert-regulatory debate reflexively considers the social discipline necessary to prevent harm, now more broadly defined than before. Official procedures undergo tensions between predicting, testing and prescribing operator behaviour. In effect, GM crops have been kept continuously ‘on trial’.
Source: Futures (2007) vol. 39, p. 408-431
April 21, 2008
Oxylipin Pathway in Rice and Arabidopsis
Plants have evolved complex signaling pathways to coordinate responses to developmental and environmental information. The oxylipin pathway is one pivotal lipid-based signaling network, composed of several competing branch pathways, that determines the plant's ability to adapt to various stimuli. Activation of the oxylipin pathway induces the de novo synthesis of biologically active metabolites called "oxylipins". The relative levels of these metabolites are a distinct indicator of each plant species and determine the ability of plants to adapt to different stimuli. The two major branches of the oxylipin pathway, allene oxide synthase (AOS) and hydroperoxide lyase (HPL) are responsible for production of the signaling compounds, jasmonates and aldehydes respectively. Here, we compare and contrast the regulation of AOS and HPL branch pathways in rice and Arabidopsis as model monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous systems. These analyses provide new insights into the evolution of JAs and aldehydes signaling pathways, and the complex network of processes responsible for stress adaptations in monocots and dicots.
Source: Journal of Integrative Plant Biology (2007) vol. 49, p. 43-51
April 13, 2008
5 Foods That Feed Cholesterol
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