Wednesday morning the 14th I am speaking to James Coleman on First@Five, RadioLive. For those who might want more information about these science stories there are links and details included here.
The first story we discussed had to do with the newest finding for a specific antioxidant found in wine and chocolate, resveratrol. Essentially, in a large scale (783 people) study published in JAMA internal medicine found that in adults over 65 in the Chianti region of Italy, levels of this antioxidant in urine had no effect over a nine year period on major health outcomes such as cause of death, cancer, inflammation or heart disease. The moral of the story? Drink wine and eat chocolate in moderation but don’t expect that doing so is necessarily going to add years to your life, at least not because of resveratrol. For those interested in reading more about the antioxidant, resveratrol you can follow these links:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/us-health-wine-study-idUSKBN0DS1IW20140512
For a nice interactive graphic that includes this and other popular health supplements with varying amounts of scientific support see here:
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/
A team of scientists from Illinois led by Dr. Scott White, have developed a regenerating plastic: a material that can fill itself in when damage occurs. The technique mimics biological systems, vessels in the material carry separate polymerizing materials that interact only where damage has taken place, filling the hole in a two step process. The hope is that in the future materials will constantly regenerate when damaged. For more on this story see the links below. The video is highly recommended in this case. Seeing is believing!
http://news.illinois.edu/news/14/0508plastic_ScottWhite_JeffryMoore_NancySottos.html
