Paleo People Downed Carbs

Ahhhh, carbs taste delicious... that's the problem... we eat too many of them. Our bodies didn't eat that much through time - it was easier to eat leaves and meat. See this earlier post. Or this one, too. Now I need to go downstairs and eat that salad waiting for me with steelhead so I can get my naturally occurring omega 3s.

The idea is that early humans weren’t as prone to weight gain, cancers, diabetes, heart disease, and other ills that plague the postagricultural world. But as it turns out, cavemen liked their carbohydrates, too. Long before farmers outnumbered foragers, Paleolithic hunter-gatherers painstakingly collected wild oats and used stone tools to make a type of flour, a new study reveals. Paleontologists unearthed an ancient stone from a cave in southeastern Italy that dates back 32,000 years to the Gravettian culture, and to their surprise found residue from wild oats, suggesting the artifact served as a pestle for grinding. The researchers say the flour produced by this process was probably mixed with water to make porridge or flatbread, which would be easier to transport and store during winter. The belief that prehistoric people didn’t eat grain “is just wrong,” the University of Leicester’s Huw Barton tells NationalGeographic.com. “People ate what they could get their hands on. Eating is surviving.”

Another oldie, but goodie. This one also from October of last year - October 9, 2015 edition of the Week Magazine. See what I do for my readers? I save magazine pages for over a year. I guess it also illustrates how I haven't been blogging regularly.

A Freakin' Coincidence

I was doing a search on the New York Times between the years 1908 and 1911 for a certain family name. I found what I was looking for - an obituary to confirm the death of a cousin/uncle. I turned away quickly, but in doing so, something caught my eye. The next obituary was written for a person with the last name Van Houten. It was a woman, and her maiden name and parents' names were given in the small blurb.

I have a brick wall with the Van Houten name so I thought to myself, let me take a few minutes and see if I can find her husband and his family. Maybe I can climb a few branches and find the name I am looking for. Maybe this will lead me to sources which I can explore more fully. This family seems to be involved with the Dutch Reformed Church and there is a very large family group in Passaic, New Jersey. I had been led to both places previously, but have not found what I was looking for.

Plenty of wiggling leaves enticed me on the newly created tree. I finally got to one hint which led me to Findagrave... (I love Findagrave; I love the quietness of walking in the cemeteries; I love the possibility of helping someone find their missing relative; I love seeing beautiful statuary... I just think it is all a great way to spend some time... kinda like golf, I imagine.... a beautiful day in the sunshine taking a slow, purposeful walk.)



When I clicked on her husband what did I find? I found that in 2013 I had created his memorial on the web site; that I had uploaded the photograph! Bi-Zarre. I don't remember that at all.

And, with that being said... I may have just realized a huge mistake on my part. This tombstone does not suggest he is dead, just that he was the husband of Anna Carter Laffey Van Houten who is buried here with her parents. She clearly died young. I can not find another Willard Van Houten on Findagrave which matches the Vital Statistics of this man. And, I gotta tell you, I don't recall wandering through this graveyard... so perhaps I am mistaken. Yikes. So, do I delete the memorial I just found? That's probably the safe thing to do. Let someone else find him again if he is there.

Orphaned Sisters Reunited

How fortunate they are to have found one another. What a wonderful, crazy story. (I wonder what their tree looks like...)

Two orphaned sisters who were separated in South Korea more than 40 years ago have been reunited after they coincidentally started working at the same hospital in Sarasota, Fla. Holly Hoyle O’Brien, 46, born Pok-nam Shin, and Meagan Hughes, 44, born Eun-sook, struck up an instant friendship while working as nurses on the same shift pattern, and began to suspect they might be related because of similarities in their stories. Both had “abandonment” listed on their orphanage papers, and both had been adopted by American families. The pair took DNA tests, which confirmed their kinship. “My first reaction was like, ‘Oh my God,’” said Hughes. “I have a sister.”

I have been carrying this story around with me for a while meaning to blog about it... Taken from the October 23, 2015 edition of the Week.

Cranfield Nano Membrane Toilet

I am fascinated by this stuff. I like that it can charge a mobile phone, so when I am living off the grid I can power my emergency phone with my own poop. Brilliant.



Around 2.3 billion people around the world are living without access to safe and sanitised toilet facilities, so scientists in the UK have designed a new cheap, waterless, and energy-producing toilet, and it's been scheduled for trials in Africa later this year.

The environmentally friendly and easy-to-maintain Nano Membrane Toilet has secured backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and has been three years in the making. If initial trials go well, the technology could be used everywhere from military vehicles to luxury yachts.

At the core of the toilet's operation is a nanotech membrane, which separates vapourised water from the rest of the waste after some initial sedimentation. This process cleans it up for household washing or field irrigation by removing pathogens while the liquid is in a vapourised state. Nano-coated beads lead to the formation of clean water droplets on the other side.

An Archimedean screw system then kicks into gear to send the leftovers into a second chamber where they can be incinerated and turned into ash and heat. While the details of this second part of the process are still being finalised, the designers say it should be able to produce enough energy to power the whole operation, with some leftover to charge small gadgets such as mobile phones.

The remaining ash can be used as a fertiliser, while the closed lid and a special rotating mechanism (which replaces the flush) will prevent any unwanted odours from escaping.

That last point is important - the squalid state of many toilets in developing nations can lead to people opting for the great outdoors, which brings its own set of hygiene and safety issues.

The makers of the toilets are planning to distribute them through a rental system, which would bring costs for users down even further. Ghana has been earmarked as a potential location for the first trial run.

The Nano Membrane Toilet is being developed by researchers at Cranfield University, and was recently announced as a finalist at the Cleantech Innovate showcase.

"We are delighted to see this innovative solution gaining national recognition through Cleantech Innovate," said one of the team, Elise Cartmell. "The Nano Membrane Toilet has the potential to change millions of lives by providing access to safe and affordable sanitation."

Though I first read about this in the UK Guardian newspaper, I actually copied this article from here.

And I think I am learning a little bit about including videos in my blog. Small victories.

Calcium pills linked to dementia

Crap, crap, crap. I know too many women who take calcium supplements not to be scared by this. Man, I just wish I could make good decisions in real time so that I don't need pharmaceuticals later in life! Dementia is so very scary!

Calcium supplements are widely used to ward off age-related bone loss, but a new study suggests that for some women they also bring a significantly higher risk for dementia. Researchers in Sweden tested the memory and thinking skills of 700 older women and tracked their use of calcium supplements. Women with a history of stroke who took calcium were seven times more likely to develop dementia within five years than were women who had suffered strokes but didn’t use the supplements. Among the women with signs of cerebrovascular disease, a disorder that affects blood flow to the brain, those who took calcium were twice as likely to develop dementia as the women who didn’t. These findings don’t prove that calcium supplements increase the risk for dementia, but researchers say they warrant further investigation. “People have a tendency to assume that dietary supplements are automatically innocuous,” neurologist Marc Gordon, who was not involved in the study, tells LiveScience.com. But “high levels of supplementation as opposed to just dietary intake [of calcium] could conceivably have some deleterious effects.”

Taken from the September 9th edition of The Week Magazine.

Happy wife, healthy life

Aaah, isn't this a no-brainer? I know I am more loving in general when I am happy. I have more energy to cook for my husband... and as any reader would know, I have a certain philosophy about food choices.

New research adds credibility to the old saying “Happy wife, happy life,” suggesting that men and women with happy spouses are not only happier but also healthier. For the study, researchers analyzed data compiled on nearly 2,000 middle-aged, heterosexual couples whose happiness and physical health were tracked for 6 years. They found that those whose spouses had a positive outlook were 34 percent more likely to be healthy, exercise regularly and eat healthfully, and have positive outlooks themselves. Those with a pessimistic partner, on the other hand, had more health issues and were less physically active. Why? The researchers speculate that when one member of a couple adopts good lifestyle habits, that person encourages his or her spouse to do the same. Spouses with a positive outlook also cause less stress in the relationship, the study’s lead author, William Chopik, tells Time.com. “Simply having a happy partner,” he said, “may enhance health as much as striving to be happy oneself.”

I found this in the same October 14th edition of the Week Magazine.

How to slow brain aging

Crap - I guess this means I need to do more exercise.... As it is now I meet with a trainer but I do my best to talk with him to distract him from having me do more exercise....

Rigorous exercise may do more than protect the heart, trim the waistline, and keep bones strong. New research suggests strenuous physical activity can slow brain aging by as much as 10 years, the Los Angeles Times reports. Scientists followed 876 older adults for five years, tracking their physical activity and testing their memory and thinking skills. MRI scans also enabled researchers to assess their brain health. Repeat tests conducted five years later revealed the participants’ brain function was closely tied to how physically active they were. Those who opted for moderate to strenuous exercise, such as running and aerobics, had the highest scores and lowest risk for memory loss and decline in executive function. Less intense activities, including walking and yoga, produced only modest benefits. The brains of those who were sedentary, on the other hand, looked a decade older than the brains of their very active peers. They also had higher blood pressure and signs of undetected ministrokes. Rigorous exercise, researchers say, improves vascular health and increases blood flow to the brain, keeping it healthier into old age.

Taken from the Week Magazine... can't remember which edition. Oops.

Family boosts longevity

Yikes. I thought it was friends. Our society is screwed, as we all move further and further away from our families. Dang, I need that tribe!

However, I have to say I have had fun connecting with far-flung relatives this four weeks. I have met probably a dozen or so second cousins on two different branches of my tree. Some people I knew their names, some I didn't know... and I found some aunts and uncles born in the middle of the 19th century, too... and they need a little exploration.

It’s become conventional wisdom that having lots of friends is essential to happiness and longevity. But a new study at the University of Toronto suggests that family bonds are far more important to adult well-being than friendships. Researchers surveyed some 3,000 people between 57 and 85, asking about their closest relationships, health, and well-being, and found that those who felt “extremely close” to several family members had a 6 percent risk of dying within five years. By contrast, people who lacked close family ties had a 14 percent mortality risk over the same period. Even those who weren’t close to their relatives had lower odds of death than people with little or no family. “Because you can choose your friends, you might expect that relationships with friends would be more important for mortality, since you might be better able to customize your friend network,” study author James Iveniuk tells WashingtonPost.com. “But it is the people who in some sense you cannot choose, and who also have little choice about choosing you, who seem to provide the greatest benefit to longevity.”

Taken from the September 9th edition of The Week Magazine.

The baby with three biological parents

I wonder how this might effect the DNA testing we are now doing to find family. And how would one express this in a family tree? Will cousins of the donor egg show up in the DNA testing?

A baby boy with genetic information from three parents has been born with the help of a controversial new in vitro fertilization technique. The procedure, called mitochondrial transfer, was created to prevent women with genetic mutations from passing along devastating diseases to their children. The first beneficiaries were a Jordanian couple who had lost two previous children and four pregnancies to Leigh syndrome, a fatal disorder that affects the developing nervous system. To enable them to have a healthy baby, New York–based fertility specialist Dr. John Zhang took the nucleus from one of the woman’s eggs and inserted it into a healthy donor’s egg that had had its own nucleus removed. The resulting egg contains the donor’s mitochondria but genetic information from the mother that will determine traits like eye and hair color; it was then fertilized with sperm from the father. About 99.9 percent of the embryo’s DNA came from his mother and father, with a tiny percentage from the donor mitochondria. The boy, now 6 months old, is healthy, but his birth has sparked criticism, since three-parent embryo techniques are banned in the U.S. because of fears they might lead to genetic abnormalities. Zhang performed the procedure in Mexico, and tells New Scientist he was justified in what he did. “To save lives is the ethical thing to do,” he said.

Taken from the October 14th edition to the Week Magazine.