University of Oxford

An apple a day keeps the heart doctor away

The 150-year-old proverb « an apple a day keeps the doctor away » stands the test of time, say Oxford University researchers.

Lead researcher Dr Adam Briggs of the British Health Foundation Health Promotion Research Group at Oxford University says: 'The Victorians had it about right when they came up with their brilliantly clear and simple public health advice.

The researchers calculated that an apple a day for all adults, aged 50 and over, in the United Kingdom, would prevent around 8 500 deaths from heart attacks and strokes every year.

See more at:  http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2013/131218.html

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UCLA University of California, Los Angeles

Los Angeles. neighborhoods show striking differences in transit-related air pollution

Noxious particulate concentrations highest near Santa Monica Airport

 UCLA researchers pitted four Los Angeles neighborhoods head-to-head to compare their air pollution levels and found that while more affluent neighborhoods generally fared better, the Mar Vista community near the Santa Monica Airport scored worse for ultrafine particle pollutants than freeway-laced downtown and Boyle Heights and far worse than neighboring portions of West Los Angeles.

Researchers used an emissions-free electric vehicle filled with instruments to measure real-time air pollutant concentrations in residential areas of Boyle Heights, downtown, West Los Angeles and the Mar Vista neighborhood known as North Westdale. During typical daytime weather patterns, the North Westdale community is immediately downwind of the Santa Monica Airport.

See more at http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-researchers-discover-striking-249623.aspx

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University Concordia, Montréal

Tips on dining etiquette

Dining etiquette workshops, part of the Backpack to Briefcase series, can help students make a good impression.

Emily Campbell and Jonah Aspler, from Concordia's Department of Journalism, report how dining etiquette workshops can help students make a good impression. A video at http://www.concordia.ca/alumni-friends/cunews/offices/vpdersg/aar/2013/12/tips-on-dining-etiquette.html?

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Florida international university, Miami

Researchers predict environmental factors will imperil banana production by 2060

In the next 50 years, approximately 50 percent of conventional plantations in Central and South America are predicted to become unsuitable for the production and export of bananas.

This is a claim made by FIU biological sciences researchers Brian Machovina ’91, MS ’94 and Kenneth Feeley in their study titled, “Climate change driven shifts in the extent and location of areas suitable for export banana production.”

The researchers used global climate projections for the year 2060 and species distribution modeling (SDM) to predict the geographical shifts and map areas predicted to be suitable for commercial banana production. They found climate change, deforestation and lack of water availability will cause banana plantations currently found in areas suitable for production to shift to other countries. Countries such as Mexico, Ecuador and Peru will gain suitable cultivation areas while other countries will lose suitable areas, including Honduras and Colombia. In fact, it is estimated that Colombia will lose an estimated 62 percent of its cultivation areas.

See more at: http://news.fiu.edu/2013/12/researchers-predict-environmental-factors-will-imperil-banana-production-by-2060/72044

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University of Princeton

Researchers demonstrate new way to sustain high-performance fusion plasmas

A multinational team led by Chinese researchers in collaboration with U.S. and European partners has successfully demonstrated a novel technique for suppressing instabilities that can cut short the life of controlled fusion reactions. The team, headed by researchers at the Institute of Plasma Physics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP), combined the new technique with a method that the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has developed for protecting the walls that surround the hot, charged plasma gas that fuels fusion reactions.

 The record-setting results of the tests, conducted on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, China, could mark a key step in the worldwide effort to develop fusion as a clean and abundant source of energy for generating electricity. "This is a very good example of multinational collaboration on EAST," said ASIPP Director Jiangang Li. "I very much appreciate the effort of our collaborators."

See more at: 

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S38/60/84K06/index.xml?section=topstories

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Northeastern university, Boston, Massachusetts

The potential pandemic

What would happen if haz­ardous bio­log­ical research acci­den­tally escaped the lab? Alessandro Vespig­nani, a North­eastern pro­fessor and world-​​renowned sta­tis­tical physi­cist, con­ducted a com­pu­ta­tional exper­i­ment to find out.

 In 2011, scientists suc­cess­fully engi­neered a lethal avian flu virus to be trans­mis­sible between birds as well as mam­mals and pos­sibly humans. The novel virus, a genet­i­cally engi­neered vari­a­tion of H5N1 avian influenza, sparked an enor­mous debate among both the research com­mu­nity and the public about how to manage such research and whether it should even be car­ried out at all.

That’s where North­eastern stepped in. “We thought it was impor­tant to pro­vide some hard num­bers to the debate,” said Alessandro Vespig­nani, a world-​​renowned sta­tis­tical physi­cist and the Stern­berg Family Dis­tin­guished Uni­ver­sity Professor.

 See more at http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2013/11/potential-pandemic/

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