The Internet of ME: health

Since calorie labeling on most alcoholic beverages is voluntary, it’s often hard to know how many calories are in your favorite brew.

And — perhaps — ignorance is bliss. But ignoring those liquid calories is about to get a lot tougher. Soon, calorie counts may be staring you in the face.

The Beer Institute, a trade group that includes the biggest brewing names, including Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and Heineken USA, has announced a new initiative aimed at transparency.

Brewers will list calories, carbs, alcohol by volume (ABV) and other nutrition information right on their bottles and cans.

Beer Bottles Will Soon Include A Reality Check: A Calorie Count

Chart: Katie Park and Rhitu Chaterjee/NPR

SHUT UP, BEER! I KNOW YOU’RE BAD FOR ME!!! NOW GET IN MY MOUTH!!!

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Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Forget The Gizmos: Exercise Works Best For Lower-Back Pain

Forget The Gizmos: Exercise Works Best For Lower-Back Pain:

Who would have thought: get up and move, and you’ll be healthier. That’s some fancy science right there.

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Thursday, January 28, 2016

With Winter Here, Many Kids Could Use Vitamin D Supplements

With Winter Here, Many Kids Could Use Vitamin D Supplements:

Ugh. Winter is the worst.

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Sunday, December 27, 2015

techcrunch: The future of wearables could be inked on your...

techcrunch:

The future of wearables could be inked on your skin. Chaotic Moon, a software design and development firm based in Austin, Texas, is developing a high-tech tattoo made of components and conductive paint to create circuitry to basically turn you into a cyborg…er collect health and other biometric data from your body.

Check it out right here.

Erm… no thank you…

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Wednesday, December 23, 2015

thebeakerblog: As the battle against malaria continues, a new...

thebeakerblog:

As the battle against malaria continues, a new idea has emerged: turning mosquitoes into our allies.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of California outline the idea, which uses a gene-editing tool (called CRISPR) to create mosquitoes filled with malaria-blocking genes.

The mosquitoes are also engineered with a so-called “gene drive” that will push the malaria-blocking genes through wild mosquito populations much faster than would be anticipated by Mendel’s laws of genetics.

According to the New York Times:

The other modification is a set of genetic elements known as a gene drive that should propel the malaria-resistance genes throughout a natural mosquito population. When a malaria-resistant male mosquito mates with a wild female, the gene drive copies both itself and the resistance genes over from the male chromosome to its female counterpart.

These genetically-engineered mosquitoes haven’t been introduced into the wild yet, but that could soon change. About 3.4 billion people live in areas at risk of malaria transmission and, in 2013, the disease killed 500,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.

The New York Times continues:

Rendering the wild mosquito population immune to the malaria parasite may seem a fairly minimal and benign intervention. But no gene drives have yet been released into the wild, and biologists are keen to avoid surprises that might arouse public hostility to the novel technology.

To that end, study co-author Anthony James said further testing will be needed to confirm the efficacy of malaria-blocking antibodies created by the genetic tweaking. “We know the gene works,” said James, in a news release. “The mosquitoes we created are not the final brand, but we know this technology allows us to efficiently create large populations.”

Read more: Engineering Mosquitoes’ Genes to Resist Malaria

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)