Quick links: Ancient antibiotics to Yo-yo dieting

Ancient Nubians may have purposely brewed antibiotic-rich beer and fed it to sick people.

Scientists discover the properties of the perfect sports bra, but no bra on the market fits the description.

Study claims to disprove that “diets don’t work” by finding that it’s eating more post-diet that makes dieters fatter in the long run. Their results say the opposite to me: if the binge is typically triggered by dieting, doesn’t that make dieting the culprit?

To avoid overheating during exercise, you should drink more water, right? Probably not, say the guys at Science of Sport. Drinking a little extra doesn’t affect your body temperature much.

Some universities experiment with opening the online portion of classes to everybody - different than OpenCourseWare projects since the students can interact with each other.

It’s off-topic, but this guy is traveling the world with no baggage of any kind, just a vest with pockets. (The trip is sponsored by the maker of the vest). Yes, he keeps a change of underwear in his vest. Like the idea? Check out One Bag for tips on traveling with just a carry-on, no matter how far or how long you’re gone.

How safe is the HPV vaccine? A nice visualization of the risks of dying from the vaccine, vs. dying from the cancer it prevents, vs. dying from other causes including “ignition of nightwear.”

Expert advice on running shoes may be worse than no advice at all

If you want to take up running, you’re supposed to choose a running shoe based on your foot type. If you have low arches, you are an “overpronator” and a good running store will send you home with a motion-control shoe that keeps your foot from rolling toward the inside with each step. If you are a “supinator” with high arches, you’ll get a shoe with lots of cushioning instead. The average non-specialized running shoe is reserved for those with a supposedly neutral gait.

That may be a mistake, say a couple of new studies on injury rates. One found that assigning shoes by foot type didn’t reduce injuries; the other found that specialized shoes, especially the motion-control ones, increased injury rates.

This caught my eye because I’ve been told I’m an overpronator and need motion-control shoes, yet I always had more pain and problems running in them than in flexible shoes like the Nike Free. Once I figured that out, I swore off any shoe with a rigid sole, which includes most running shoes. Motion-control shoes have the stiffest soles of all. According to the nytimes article,

across the board, motion-control shoes were the most injurious for the runners. Many overpronators, who, in theory, should have benefited from motion-control shoes, complained of pain and missed training days after wearing them, as did a number of the runners with normal feet and every single underpronating runner assigned to the motion-control shoes.

Biomechanical studies show that motion-control shoes really do control the motion of your foot, but the author of the Army studies points out that we don’t know whether that motion - the over- or under-pronation - is actually a problem. Barefoot running enthusiasts say that injuries attributed to over- or under-pronation are caused by footwear itself. “Pronation is a natural thing,” says one barefoot runner. “Be happy that it occurs, cause it’s one of our body’s little advantages.”

Linux kernel genomics, babyology, and the secret to lifting more weight without getting any stronger

1

A comparison of the Linux kernel’s system calls with the transcriptional network of E. coli shows two very different organizational structures. “Linux is middle-management heavy, whereas E. coli is workhorse heavy. … The authors conclude that the E. coli’s call graph evolved bottom-up, with system robustness being the main selective trait. In contrast, Linux evolved top-bottom, with reusability of the Workhorses being the main selective trait. Reusability and robustness are tradeoffs,” writes Iddo Friedberg.
[Byte Size Biology: Comparative functional genomics: penguin vs. bacterium]

2

“We do not know much about sleep in babies but it does not look like sleep in adults,” says one sleep researcher, about a recent study in which babies showed the ability to learn while asleep. Comatose adults can learn the same association (between a beep and a puff of air to the face) but the experiment doesn’t work on healthy adults, since they wake up. [New Scientist: Sleeping newborns are data sponges]

3

When you’re at the gym, cool your hands between sets and you might be able to lift more. The hypothesis is that the cooling makes you think you’re less fatigued. However it works, that’s just weird.  [Sweat Science: Cooling your palms enables you to bench press more weight]

4

Fetal cells stay in their mother’s body for years - maybe forever. Nancy Schute at SciAm writes that “Fetal cells also appear to migrate to injury sites and have been found in patients with thyroid and liver damage, where they had morphed into organ cells … A mother’s body might actually be recruiting the fetal stem cells to aid in healing.” Wow! [Scientific American: Beyond Birth]