After Tuesday`s lecture I got really intriged about cows created to much methane that is contributing to the Greenhouse effect and the global warming. I would never thought that an animal specially cows would be in a certain way harmful for the environment. But how much is that contribution?  Let`s take a look.

Agriculture is responsable for an estimated 14 percent of the world`s greenhouse gases. I significant portion of these emissions come from methane, which contributes to the global warming. The methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The world`s 1.5 billion cows and billions of other grazing animals emit dozens of polluting gases including methane. Cows emit a massive amount of methane through belching, with a lesser amount through faltulence. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters a day ( 26-53 gallons) is the average dairy cow expels methane. A herb of cows produces more greenhouse gas in a year than a family car produces to dive 3,000 miles. Dr. Andy Thorpe of Porthsmouth University said that 200 cows expel an annual amount of methane equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions of a car burning 21,400 litres of petrol. Between 55 percent and 70 percent of methan produced from man-made sources, mostly farming of animals such as cows,sheep and goats, which have an additional stomach and produce large amounts of methane as they digest food.

So, how is possible for a cow to expel that amount of methane? Cows, goats, sheep and several other animals belong to a class of animals called ruminants. The class of animals have 4 stomachs and digest food in their stomachs instead of in their intestines, as humans do. Ruminants eat food, regirgitate it as cu and eat it againg. The stomachs are filled with bacteria that aid in digestion, but also produc methane. What we can do to reduce the amount of methane expel by ruminants? A thre-year study, begun in April 2007 by Welsh scientists, is examining if adding garlic to the cow feed can reduce their methane production. The suty is still in process, but early results indicate that garlic cuts cows flatulence in half by attacking methane-producing microbes living in cows`stomachs. By changing the feeding of the cows, researchers are also looking to see if the addition of garlic affects the quality of the meat or milk produced.

With milliosn of ruminants in Britain, including 10 millions cows, a strong push is underway to curb methane emissions there. Cows contribute 3 percent Britain`s overall greenhouse gas emissions and 25 to 30 percent is methane. In New Zealand, where cattle and sheep farming are major industries, 34 percent of greanhouse gases come from livestock.

What if gobla warming is creating that amount of methane production in ruminants? The experimental study cannot rule out the possiblity of reverse causation. A third variable cannot be ruled out, either. BY changing the diet we can find a link whethever if the grass is what is causing the larg amount of production of methane in ruminants. Further questions: what would happen to the meat economy of there is a significant change in the quality of milk and meat by adding garlic to cows`diet? If we kill all the cows, how much increase of fish and cereal demand would be? Without the cows, could be reverse the greenhouse effect?

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/methane-cow.htm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1079354/Herd-200-cows-produces-greenhouse-gas-family-car-driven-3-000-miles.html

So…. I came home one day and said hello to my roommate, she is doing a nutrion major and was doing a project about changing the diet of a 50-years-old man that was obese. She had to mention the different kind of disease that obesity can lead. So she started talking about one of the diseases could be erectile dysfuntion and I never though that would be a connection between those to conditions, so I decided to investigate by my own.

First lets define obesity, the word obesity means too muhc body fat. It`s usually based on your body mass index (BMI). If your BMI is 25 to 29.9, you are overweight bot not obese. A BMI of 30 or more is in the obese range.

A new study shows that obesity has a significant impact on male sexual health. The Journal of Sexual Medicine publishe a study focused on 2,435 Italina male patients who are being treated for sexual dysfunction between the years 2001 and 2007. 41% of the participant were normal weight, 42.4% were overwwight, 12.1% were obese, and 4% were severly obese. The mean age was 52. They had blood tests and a penile Doppler ultrasound to measure penile blood flow. Excess weight, especially excess belly fat, can affect sexual function in many ways; it can interfere with the body`s ability to supply blood to the penis, for instance, and it can cause testosterone production  to plummet. Among study participants, it was found that the degree of obesity correlated with the decrease in testosterone level; the more the severe the obesity, the lower the level of testosterone.

Giovanni Corona, MD, from the University of Florence, and collegueas concluded that the conditions realted to obesity, particularly hypertension, are themost sinificant causes of obesity-related mental health. Abnormal penile blood flow was found to be linked to high blood pressure.

The sample size of the observational study is big enough to take into consideration, the change in diet and life style may have some impact on the stadistics. The Texas sharp sharp shooter problem can be discarted because there was only one variable measured. But what if ED (erectile dysfunction) is causing obesity? This study cannot rule out the possiblity of reverse causation. Confounding variables are not ruled , either. The patient`s life style could be a link between ED and obesity.

http://www.webmd.com/erectile-dysfunction/news/20081031/obesity-linked-to-erectile-dysfunction

So after my post about if there was a correlation between birth control pills and breast cancer, I am  still intriged about how easy you can get cancer. Here are some interesting facts about breast cancer that everyone should be aware of:

About 1 in 8 U.S women (12%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime.

In 2014, an estimated 232,670 new cases of invasive breast cancer were expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S, along with 62,570 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.

For women ins the U.S, breast cancer death rates are higher than those for any other cancer, besides lung cancer.

Pretty sad stadistics right? and I was wondering what made women ins the U.S so vulnerable to breast cancer? Is it a generic problem? So I investigate.

A new study found a genetic variant that is particularly coomon in some Hispanic women with indigenous American ancestry appears to drastically lower the risk of breast cancer. One in 5 Latinas in the U.S carry one copy of the variant, and roughly 1% carry two.

The findings may also explain why Latinas have lowers rates of breast cancer than other Americans. According to federal data, Hispanics have less than 10% lifetime risk of breast cancer, compared about 13 percent for non- Hispanic whites and 11 percent for blacks. Some behavioral factos have been thought to account for at least part of this reduced risk. Latinas, for example, are less likely to use pstmenopausal hormones, and they tend to have more children and give birth at younger ages, said Dr. Elad Ziv, a professor of medicne at the university in San Franscico. Generics was another factor that Dr. Ziv suspected might also have a role on the discovery. So he and his colleagues scanned and compared the DNA of breast cancer patients and control subjects in various populations, carrying out a so-called- genome-wide association study that can link genetic variations to disease. The DNA of 3,000 women with breast cancer was analyzed, and about 8,200 women without the disease. The researchers discovered the protective variant, which is known as a single nucleotide polymorphism, they also discovered that its frequency tracked with indigenous ancestry. The frenquency in different countries was 15 percent in Mexico, 10 percent in Colombia and 5 percent in Puerto Rico. But was 1 percent for whites and black and other study showed that the same thing occurs in about 2 percent of Chinese people.” I`m confident that this finding is going to hold, that most women who have this genetic variant are at lower risk of breast cancer,” says Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society,” But keep in mind that some women with this variant stil get breast cancer. It might be because they have this variant and something else that cancels it out.”

Even though the study was observational with a correct or false postive hypothesis and the sample size was big, I am Latin and I wouldn`t change my behavior of having more childs (more than I am planning to) and/or the age when I am having them. Also there has to be more studies about this topic because of the incognetives that surrounds it. The Texas sharp shooter can be discarted because the study was measuring one variable. I will keep looking for more studies for these topic.

http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics

One of my friends, her mom died from breast cancer, her tattoo is a remainder for her that her mom is still with her; for me is a remainder that there is other people suffering from chemotherapy and the effects. I always wonder if there is another way to treat cancer, is when my investigation begins.

When it comes to taming tumors, the strategy has always been fairly straightfoward. Remove the abnormal growth by any means, in the most effective way possible. The standar treatments used today has the same approach, surgery physically cuts out malignant lesions, chemotherapy agents dissolve them from within, and radiation seeks and destroys abnormally dividing cells. No one can deny that such methods work; deaths from cancer have dropped by around 20% in the U.S over the past 2 decades. But even though of the effectiveness of the method, these interventions can be just as brutal on the patient as they are on a tumor. Researchers were excited by some studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine that showed a new type of anticancer drug, which is entirely different way from chemotherapy, the patients tally up to an 83% survival rate after being treated for 2 years.

It is called ibrutinib, and it`s a potential breakthrough in treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that could save patients from some effects of the chemotherapy. The experimental drug is being tested on tumors that target the body`s inmune system, such as CLL and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

Early work on animals showed that the experimental drug effectively shut down tumor cell division, so the researchers tested the compound on 85 CLL patients who had all tried and failed to respond to at least 2 other anticancer treatments. The patients were randomized to take on of two different doses of ibrutinib a day. Three pills of ibrutinib are taken once a day. After two years of treatment, 71% of this hard-t-treat group had responded with slower tumor growth, and at 26 months, 75% showed no additional progression of their cancer. At the end of the study period, 83% of the participants were still alive, and most of the patients only complained of diarrhea and fatigue.

“The most common thing I have heard patinets say is that it brings their disease under control and makes them feel how they did before their cancer. I have heard that at least a dozen times,” says study author Dr. John C. Byrd, the director of the division of hematology of The Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center.

So, could the ned of chemotherapy be near? the difference between carpet bombing and “smart bomb” strategies for leveling an enemy, targeted therapies are aimed at specific pathways that tumor cells use to thrive, blocking them in the same way that monkeying with a car`s ignition or its fuel intake, can keep it from running properly. The advantage of these precise strategies is that they leave healthy cells alon, which for patients means fewer side effects and complications. For patients, these types of creative strategies could mean gentler, more tolerable cancer treatments and more years of living cancer-free.

The study was experimental and the results that suggests to be truth ( or a false positive, which would be really unfortunate but it can only be prove with more studies and more patients, and there is always chance) about the end of chemotherapy would be a great advance on the medicine area. Because there was only one variable tested, the Texas sharp shooter problem can be discarted. Wherever or not these drug works, I think we are on the right track to a most successfull and least painful treatment for cancer.

New Drug May Be Best Treatment for Leukemia Yet

No More Chemo: Doctors Say It’s Not So Far-Fetched

For the students that don`t have a meal plan like me, after a day of class, projects, exams and papers, the last thing they want to do is cook. So instead of looking for all the ingredients, chop them, mix them, and cook them; a easier option is to go to the freezer, that your frozen pizza put it in the microwave, set it for 5 minutes and dinner is serve!

So when I try to do the same at home, my mom always tells me to put the pizza on other non-plastic container. So I decided to investigate what is this decision based on. When food is wrapped on plastic or plced in a plastic container and microwaved, subtances used in manufacturing the plastic may leak into the food. Some kind of food like fatty food such as meats and cheeses causes a chemical called diethylhexyl adipate to leach out of the plastic. These chemical is a light-colored, oily liquid with an aromatic odor. It is used in making platics. It is also used as a solvent in aircraft lubricants. The health effect are on the short-term, the chemical is not known to cause any health problems when people are exposed to it at levels above 0.4 ppm (parts per million). On the long-term, it has the potential to cause the following effects from a lifetime exposure at levels above 0.4 ppm like reduced body weight and bone mass; damage to liver and testes; cancer. The damage caused by plastic containers has been studied in animals. IN these studies, hgigh doses of toxic chemicals from plastics have lead to repdroductive illnesses, cancer and olther health issues. It is believed, however, that the leaking of the chemicals in plastics in very small amounts is not a health hazard in humans.

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is aware of this problem and mandates that manufactures of platics food containers test their products to be sure that this dander does not exist. The testing process takes into account the tumber of times a plastic food container is likely to be used, what types of foods will be heated in it, and how long it is likely to be placed in to the microwave at specific temperatures.

First, the test is experimental, so the independent variable is manipulated by the people running these test. It could be possible that the study is suffering the Texas sharp shooter problem because of all the variables that are being tested it can be that something is going on and also can be due to chance.So now that the alternative hypothesis is correct or is a false positive, is still enoguh to change your behavoir toward microwaving food in plastic containers? leave it up to you.

http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/is-it-safe-to-microwave-plastic-food-containers.html#b

http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/pdfs/factsheets/soc/adipate.pdf

I am athlete and practice 20 hours a week, I want to perform well at competitions, but also I am in college and going out and have fun is part of being in college. I might take a glass or two depends on my mood. But I always was worried about how the alcohol would affect if it does, how much would affect on my performance.

Overall, alcohol is a diuretic, which means that your kidney will produce more urine, drinking too much alcohol can lead to dehydration. When you excersice you need to be hydrated to maintain the flow of blood through your body. which is essential for circulating oxygen and nutrients to your muscles.

For athletles, the understimation of the way in which alchohol use, even in small amounts, can nullify the hard work by erasing the effects of workouts, reducing endurance and compromising mental game.

First of all, alcohol use cancels out gains from your workouts. The consumption of alcohol after a workout, practice or competition can cancel out any physiological gains that may have being receive from such activities. Not only does long-term alcohol use diminish protein synthesis resulting in a decrease in muscle build-up, but even short-term alcohol use can impede muscle growth.

Dehydrations is another important factor of which an athlete can be out of performance for a while because of injuries  that  an athlete can get in this conditions. Alcohol is a toxin that travels through your bloodstream to every organ and tissue in your body, causing dehydration and slowing your body`s ability to heal itself.

Alcohol use hampers memory and retention, memory is a complex process that takes a long time, much of our memory formation occurs while we are sleeping. Alcohol affects your sleep cycle by disrupting the sequence and duration of normal sleep, reducing your brain`s ability to learn and retain information. These also apply to studying, for example if you drink after a day of classes, studying or learning, you are not getting 100 percent out of your efforts becauseof the effects of alcohol you drank.

I though that a glass or two on a saturday night wouldn`t be harm, it actually does. Consuming alcoholic beverages in one night can affect brain and body activities for up to 3 days. So now I hope people would be more aware of the correlation of alcohol and performance.

https://www.princeton.edu/uhs/pdfs/NCAA%20Alcohol%20and%20Athletic%20Performance.pdf

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/check-the-facts/health-effects-of-alcohol/healthy-lifestyle/can-alcohol-affect-sports-performance-and-fitness-levels#performance

Dimethylpolysiloxane is a type of silicone that is used in vinegary-smelling silicone caulks, adhesives, and aquarium sealants, a component in silicone grease and other silicone based lubricants, as well as in defoaming agents, mold release agents, daming fluids, heat transfer fluids, polishes, cosmetics, hair conditioners.

So why would you care about this especific type of silicone? According to the McDonald`s Corporation, its famous chicken McNuggets are made with Dimethylpolysiloxane and citric acid added to preserve freshness. I know I feel bad because I just broke your heart, the truth is that only half of the chicken mcnugget is made of chicken and still the chicken had been vaccine and added hormones.

Laboratories studies have linked it to stomach tumors.” At higher doses, it has some negative health effect on lab animals, such as producing precursors to stomach tumors and damage to ADN. A number of studies have shown that prolonged exposure to high doses of TNHQ may be carcinogenic, especially for stomach tumors.

So from now on, everyone should think twice before getting chicken mcnuggets at McDonals.

http://www.naturalnews.com/032820_Chicken_McNuggets_ingredients.html#

http://foodbabe.com/2013/10/22/sillyputty/

Interesting Fact: The typical American woman wants two children.

The average age Americans lose their virginities is 17.1. Nowadays women aged 17-44 who are sexually experimented if they want to achieve their goal of having 2 children they are forced to use a contraceptual method. The birth control pill is the most popular contraceptive method with 28% among all the women that use one.

Since the early 1960s, birth control pills have become the most popular form of birth control used in the U.S. But there is a association between estrogen and an increased risk of breast cancer which leads to a debate about the role of birth control pills with breast cancer. Some researchers think this might be due to the fact that the level of hormones in birth control pills has changed since they were studied. Early birth control pills contained much higher levels of hormones than today`s low-dose pills. What was found is that the longer use of the pill seemed to increase the risk and that 10 years or more after women stopped using birth control pills, their breast cancer risk returned to the same levels as if they had never used birth control pills.

A study by Women`s Contraceptive adn Reproductive Experience (Women`s CARE) done between 1994 and 1998 showed there was no increased risk of breast cancer in current or former users of birth control pills. So far, studies have not found a overall increased risk of breast cancer due to the use of oral contraceptives.

http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/guide/pill-breast-cancer-risk

http://www.guttmacher.org/media/presskits/contraception-US/statsandfacts.html

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualactivity

Dietary supplements are popular in the U.S and the number of Americans trying to insure the path to wellness is well-paved with nutrients, whether or not they are eating a balanced diet, is on the rise. The common idea is that all the lacks of nutrients that your diet doesn´t have ,you can take it with a pill. What is interesting here is that there is not much knowlege abut if it is good or bad keep taking all these supplemtents instead of changing your diet to get the vitamins and minerals that you body needs. My question is if the vitamins and minerals that you are taking in a pill is better or worse if you try to eat a balanced diet that would cover all of them?

It would be an experimental study, trying to find whether or not articifial supplements are the same, better or worse than having a balanced diet. It would be a group of volunteers that have a similar diet and by a randomized process have of them would take supplements and half of the would change their diet. The data you need of the voluteers would be a medical history, blood pressure, weight, height. After 6 months, you recollect the results from the voluteers and would get to a conclusion.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutrition/vitamin-supplements/10-supplements-do-not-work-advertised.htm

Hi everyone, my name is Melissa Rodriguez, I am from Chihuahua, Mexico. I am taking this course because my friends told me that was fun and interesting. The reason why I don’t want a science major is because my dream is to create my own company.